How It Ends
by RhainDrop
Summary: Set between Adam and Reset in Season 2.  Part 6/6  Complete .  Jack/Ianto, Ianto/Owen. Word count: 21,970 total.  Spoilers for seasons 1-3, and a number of the audio books, novels, and radio dramas.  Rated M for Mature.
1. Chapter 1

Set between **Adam** and **Reset** in Season 2. Part 1/3. Currently Unfinished. Jack/Ianto (Alluded to). 2,085 words. Will contain spoilers for COE by the end, but part 1 has no major spoilers. Gen/story fic.

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Gwen Cooper and Captain Jack Harkness stood one to either side of Toshiko Sato's shoulders, watching her broad array of monitors flashing in a series of blue and yellow lights as she worked. Tensions were mounting between the trio, Jack and Gwen for not quite having a tangible problem they were equipped to solve, and Tosh for having two very unhelpful shoulder angels breathing down her neck. Angels, Tosh had decided, and not devils. They meant well, after all.

"You're not helping," Owen Harper called out from where he sat at his own work station, feet on his desk and some old cult horror flick on his monitor. It was clear from the way he fidgeted with a toy rodent he'd found on his desk one day that he was just as irritated as his co-workers, but he hadn't yet reached the point of real boredom. When Owen really got bored, they would all know it. It would suddenly be honourary April Fool's Day, or surprise physical/ blood samples time.

"Standing there breathing down her neck isn't going to make the program run any faster."

Jack and Gwen stood back as though they hadn't realized just how close they'd gotten to completely overwhelming Tosh's personal space. The technologist offered Owen a small smile of gratitude before her eyes darted very quickly back to the screen so she could focus properly on her program.

"Maybe it was a false alarm," Gwen suggested, after she had checked her watch for the fourth time that half hour.

"Torchwood doesn't _get_ false alarms," replied Jack, his deep baritone wrapped in a shell of drama, as it always was when he tried to sound serious. "We're not that lucky."

"Well, maybe Tosh misread the readings, and we've already missed the Rift Spike," Gwen tried again.

It was hard to say if she was trying to offer helpful suggestions to explain Tosh's inability to lock down the spike location, or if she was just trying to make excuses, but Owen favoured the latter notion. "You have somewhere better you need to be, _Ms. Cooper_?" he accused lightly, smirking at her in that ever so demeaning yet somehow also playful way.

Gwen knew better than to rise defensively to the bait by now, and choose instead to lift herself full up and grin at him, "As a matter of fact, I do, _Dr. Harper_. Rhys' father is in town, and I promised to meet them for dinner." She turned and smiled at Jack, drawing him into the conversation so that he wouldn't go back to pestering Tosh. It was a rare opportunity that Gwen got to spend time with Mr. Williams, without _Mrs. Williams_ ruining a perfectly good evening.

Not for the first time, Gwen considered just how insulted Rhys would be if she decided to keep her maiden name.

"I'm sure Rhys will understand," Jack said pointedly. It had been Gwen's call not to Retcon Rhys in the first place, and one of the things that had made it so appetising to go along with the thought was that it would just make things simpler when Gwen had to work late. After all, who could get mad at their blushing bride to be for missing dinner, when she was out saving the world. Couldn't very well miss dinner if there wasn't a world to have dinner in, after all. Gwen would always have the high ground.

Gwen opened her mouth as though to argue the point, but was cut off by the sound of Ianto Jones deftly clearing his throat. The sound stopped the words on Gwen's tongue so well that she forgot what she was even going to say. Blinking, she turned to look at Ianto who was almost directly beside her.

He smiled in her direction, possibly a form of apology or greeting, or to rub it in that he had somehow managed to sneak up on her without her noticing him again. She doubted it was the last—Not quite Ianto's style, after all—but sometimes she wondered if he didn't take at least a small amount of glee in being able to sneak up on all of them.

"Coffee?" Ianto asked both her and the room at large, and the offer was like nectar from a God's lips.

"Yes," Gwen droned, while Owen advised he could murder a cup, and Toshiko said a soft pre-emptive _thank you_. Jack simply smiled at Ianto, crystal blue eyes dancing with something, some private joke or language that only the pair of them spoke.

Ianto returned the smile in his light, Ianto-way, and inclined his head to the room before heading off to make miracles happen to a bean.

The tidy little butler's kitchen was filled with pastries and beans and herbs from parts that Ianto didn't explain or share. When it was empty, he restocked it, and when it was used he cleaned it. It was the third place one needed look if they sought Ianto in the Hub (Following Jack's Office and the archives), a fact that had lovingly earned the area the title 'Ianto's Workstation'.

There wasn't really that much to making the perfect cup of coffee. A fresh bean, ground with care, and water that was neither over heated nor under boiled. One could tell, if they paid close enough attention, just how ready their coffee was by the deep and strong scent that swirled around the room in a cacophony of delight as it was being prepared.

Owen grunted softly as the smell wafted over him. They'd had a late night the night before, and needed to get the cover story in place for not one but two young students that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. On top of that, there had been three weevils to take care of. He, Gwen, and Tosh had been sent home for rest, but Ianto was up most of the night dealing with the cells and the cover stories.

Ordinarily, that wouldn't have bothered Owen so much, but it had resulted in Jack insisting their Tea Boy go home and get some sleep. Which had in turn resulted in Owen missing out on his morning fix. Then, when Ianto was called back in, there had been no time for coffee; Ianto was simply sent out to kit up the SUV.

Instant was okay in a pinch, but Owen was craving the good stuff.

It occurred to the doctor that he might have a problem, but he assuaged his fears by telling himself that he could quit any time he wanted to.

The worst part of missing out on that second cup of coffee was that they hadn't even gotten to go find something alien to take their aggressions out on. Half way to the SUV, Tosh had stopped them and called them back to the main base. Apparently, something was wrong with her predictor program—A fact that had both pissed Tosh off and embarrassed her, causing a cute little blush to kiss her cheeks—and she didn't know where exactly the spike was going to show up.

At first it looked like it might be out over the Bay. Then possibly up on the Plass. But after second-third-guessing herself, Tosh decided that the rift was going to appear right down in the Hub. Finally, after being on high alert for two hours, she decided that there was simply something wrong with the program, and that she didn't know where they needed to be.

So the team waited. And waited. And waited.

It was tense, and nerve wrecking, and really they held out as long as they could before deciding that the viper like level of preparedness was unnecessary. Ianto was the first to kick off, excusing himself to go feed the Weevils, since he wasn't actually needed to locate the rift spike. Owen used Ianto's breaking as an excuse to kick around online. Gwen called Rhys to let him know she would be late. And finally Jack disappeared in Ianto's direction, not to be seen for at least another hour.

In hind sight, Owen was surprised that Ianto's suit still appeared so crisply pressed.

With a growl of frustration, Owen pressed up out of his chair, and tossed the rat at Gwen, who caught it. A frown crossed her lips, realizing that they were about to witness Owen moving into 'really really bored' mode.

"Maybe we should order in?" she suggested, soothingly, her eyes wide as she lifted her brows in question at Owen. "We still have a credit at the Chinese place, yeah?"

"Wouldn't that be like admitting you're not making it to dinner with your fiancé?" Owen returned.

Despite herself, Gwen smiled. Even if Owen was just being a git, she loved hearing when people called her and Rhys that. "Well, what would _you_ suggest, then, Dr. Harper? Starvation? Didn't you take an oath to prevent that sort of thing?"

Owen scoffed, and headed in Ianto's direction. Gwen was about to follow, but a low ding and a sound of excitement from Tosh drew her attention back to why they were actually still at the hub in the first place. She headed back to watch what Tosh was doing, Jack coming to the other side again, but both remembering not to lean too close.

"There wasn't anything wrong with my calculations, it's just that whatever's coming through tried to prevent itself from getting caught in the Rift. It tried so hard that it actually managed to move the spike closer to the source of the manipulator. The spike actually _was_ moving."

"We're all very happy that you're every bit the genius I need you to be, Tosh, but what does that mean? Did it succeed in closing the rift?" Jack was looking at Tosh's screen again. He knew quite a deal more about technology than he ever really let on, but some of the things that Tosh did were still light years beyond his 51st century mind.

"No, it just moved itself. It..." Tosh trailed off, looking up with wide eyes. For a moment it appeared as though she were looking at another monitor, and both Gwen and Jack followed her gaze to what she was seeing. It wasn't another monitor that she was looking at, though, it was the back of the tiny kitchen where Ianto and Owen were hidden away and snarking lightly at each other.

"Can I give you a hand, mate?" Owen asked Ianto as he finished with the first cup.

"Being momentarily nice to me doesn't mean you get served first. I do have a longer memory than that of a gold fish," Ianto replied, lifting his brows and watching Owen.

"It works when Jack does it," argued Owen, trying to sneak a table spoon of sugar into the black liquid.

The statement earned Owen a smirk, as Ianto dodged the sugar. "_Jack_ follows through." He looked pointedly at the mess of sugar that was now on the counter, as though telling Owen to prove his intentions by cleaning that mess up, and maybe he'd get the second cup.

"Jack bloody Harkness doesn'..." Owen trailed off, staring at Ianto. It registered to both of them that while they were standing there saying Jack's name, their boss was across the room yelling both of theirs. It registered to them at the same moment only because a golden orange glow had picked up between them, clouding their sight in something that was equally as beatific as it was dangerous.

Ianto dropped the highly sought cup on the hard tile floor, not even registering as it shattered at his feet. He stumbled back in one direction, while Owen was yanked away in the other. Then they stood there, looking at Ianto, the girls joining them a few seconds later.

As though something had snapped in Ianto, his gaze darted around the small area. Three tiled walls, covered in cabinets, and the only way out was blocked by a rift through space and time. Stuck between a Rift and a hard place... Bloody Torchwood.

Realizing just how trapped he was, Ianto finally completed his circle and looked wide-eyed at his Captain. All his wit and sarcasm, and the only thing he could think to say when the fear gripped hold was uttered as a soft request for help. "...Jack?"


	2. Chapter 2

Jack was moving. He wasn't just moving, he was barking. He was flourishing. He was... Where was he going?

Ianto watched his four teammates through the glow of the rift. It reminded him of when Capt. Hart had walked out of their lives. He'd been fine, of course, but _he_ had a portable rift manipulator. Ianto didn't have that.

As though he'd been in a daze, Ianto noticed that he'd missed a few moments in time. Tosh and Owen were at the terminals. Tosh telling him what he wanted him to do in soft but stern tones. He couldn't see them through the white tiled walls, but he could hear, which Ianto realized distantly was a good thing. If he could still hear and understand them it meant he wasn't shutting down, or slipping into any sort of shock.

Jack was back, ever-present greatcoat seemingly downgraded to sometimes-present. Ianto wondered why he wasn't wearing it, but didn't ask. Blue shirt so pale it was almost white, silver braces, and those yellow goggles he wore in the firing range. The glasses weren't the oddest thing in on Jack's person, however. Capt. Jack Harkness was wielding a heavy and vicious looking warhammer, and the grin that was splitting his face told Ianto he fully intended to make good use of it.

Ianto stood back as far as he could get as Jack ordered Gwen to stand back as well. It was only then Ianto realized it wasn't just the walls locking him on the other side of the rift, but the cabinets and the counter as well. And as it happened, those were just simple wood. Suddenly, Jack's grin was infectious.

"What are you doing?" Gwen asked, more curious than anything else, though she couldn't keep the owlish expression from her face completely.

Jack just grinned at her.

There were different grades to a Jack smile. You could tell when Jack was worried and smiling _through_ the worry. Or when he was in pain and doing the same thing. But this wasn't Jack's worried smile, and it certainly wasn't his pain face; this was the smile Jack wore when he was expecting to enjoy himself. Jack was expecting destruction with a side order of success.

It wasn't often that Jack had that look when he _couldn't_ get to Ianto, Gwen mused, but then Jack did seem to enjoy 'creative problem solving'.

"Been meaning to remodel, sir," Ianto advised, setting his hands into his pockets while he waited for Jack's plan to unfold.

Jack lifted his arms. "So, this is all some elaborate ploy to get me to redecorate? You know you only needed to ask..."

"You know me, Jack. I like a challenge."

Outwardly, Ianto projected a facade of calm. He stood almost slouched, leaning back against the back counter, but he was aware his facade wasn't carrying any real weight. Anyone who knew Ianto knew that he wouldn't just ignore the perfect black coffee he'd set on the counter when he and Owen had jumped back if he was fine. They would also know that he wouldn't just ignore the coffee maker that was whining for his attention. And there was no one who knew Ianto better than Jack.

Jack's smile faltered for a moment to something warmer, something reassuring. "You okay?" he asked in a tone that he normally reserved for late at night or when they were alone.

"Briefly inconvenienced," Ianto closed his eyes and inclined his head.

And that was when it happened.

The thing that shot out of the Rift in Gwen and Jack's direction was fast. It whipped like a frog's tongue, if that frog happened to have been made out of indigo coloured computer chips, sparkling with something that looked like, but wasn't moisture. The 'tongue' darted between the pair, coming up with nothing for its troubles but empty space. When it caught no flies, it sucked itself back into the glow.

"Something is coming through!" Tosh warned. There was excitement in her tone, a professional curiosity mixed with something unnamed. She was watching her computer, and the readings she was taking were unreal. Literally _out of this world_.

"Yeah, thanks, we can see that!" Jack returned, dodging a second shot that very nearly caught him in the shoulder. He wasn't smiling anymore.

He wasn't smiling anymore, and Ianto felt his stomach spin.

Gwen sensed the change, too. "Do you know what that is, Jack?"

"Yes," was all he said, reaching for Gwen's arm. He yanked her towards him just in time to watch the tongue flick out again. He held her to his chest as he avoided a second shot.

"You planning on sharing with the rest of the class?" Owen asked. He'd come down to join them again, and was holding a gun, waiting for something to shoot.

"It's..." Jack dodged a third shot and then shoved Gwen in Owen's direction. "Dangerous," he added.

This time the tongue hit the wall opposite the Ianto's 'station' and splattered. As it did, a yellow light spread through the dips and grooves. Then the light was followed by the entire mass of the tongue, like an elastic band that had snapped on one side and was springing back towards the other. For a moment it lingered in a yellow and indigo glob, but as the members of Torchwood 3 looked on, the glob shrank itself into the wall.

Jack didn't waste any more time now. He gave Gwen and Owen another little shove away, and lifted his arms to start demolishing the cabinetry helping to lock Ianto in the danger area.

"Woah," Gwen said, watching wide eyed and shocked as the glob sucked itself up and _into_ the wall. It was like it absorbed the tile where it was touching, figured out the purpose, and then replicated it. The surface even appeared to be slick like glass, and grooved down to the grout. If it wasn't for the stark contrast of the indigo against the white, you wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.

"Jack, what _is_ that?" Ianto asked as Jack wielded the warhammer with all the proficiency of one who had seen combat using it. He was dealing with dodging a second tongue by that point, ducking and shifting and jumping out of the way. With every impact on the walls and equipment and lighting behind him, the little room got a little darker, and the fear in Ianto's eyes got a little brighter.

Jack's expression was grim and focused. He looked like he was considering not replying, but after another swing he said, "No one really knows where they came from... If they're sentient because they're alive, or if they are sentient because that's how they were programmed." Slash and puncture and smash. With every motion, another piece of wood came off. "They spread across worlds..." Jack's eyes caught Ianto's briefly, "And turn those worlds into them."

A tendril licked out to smack one of the boards as Jack finished speaking, just as Jack struck the same board. The spike of the warhammer ripped the piece away, flinging it to the floor away from where it could harm them, but the blue was starting to crest up the concrete that lined the wall behind where the shelves had been.

Jack dropped the hammer back. There was only enough space for Ianto to get through, but there _was_ enough space. And the way the darkness was spreading across the concrete, they all knew they were about out of time.

Jack reached over the counter, around the tendrils and the rift, offering his hand to Ianto. "Move. Now," he insisted.

"Yep," Ianto moved.

The tendrils or tongues or alien tech or... whatever it was. They struck out like they were snapping in anger. They moved like they were attached to something much larger, and that much larger thing was _not_ pleased with being sucked through the Rift.

Ianto flinched, ducked, and dodged, and then finally leapt to the counter. It was a spry motion for someone who spent their days shifting about stiffly in pressed three piece suits, but no one had the time to pay it any mind.

Time slowed. Gwen and Owen held their breath as a piece so nearly struck Ianto that the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Jack had taken both of Ianto's arms in his hands, pulling the Welshman towards him.

But the darkness... the darkness was starting to get too damn close.

Ianto's arms were up around the back of Jack's neck, and Jack was just dragging him out over the remains of the cabinetry on his back. The action was pulling him over nails and broken boards, and Ianto yelled out in pain as he felt the counter rip through his suit and into his back.

The tendrils were disappearing as they enveloped the kitchen so that there was only a pair remaining in the air, seeking purchase. Gwen gasped as they both swung towards their captain and their administrator. She reached towards them both, grabbing shirts and pulling them back, and knowing that it wouldn't be enough.

Owen, on the other hand, took the more direct approach. The hammer that Jack had dropped was scooped up by the doctor, and in the same motion he brought the weapon up to smack the tendrils away. They shattered with the impact, pieces flying back into the first wall that had already been converted to the deep blue-purple.

The stubs sucked back up into the glow, but what came next was almost just as bad. A scream of pain tore out through the rip in space and time that was splintering their kitchen. It sounded nothing like a scream that any human could make, or even most of the aliens they'd ever heard. It was like miles and miles of metal grinding down upon itself, twisting and pulling until it shattered out in a burst of noise. It was the sound of agony turned physical, turned audible.

With a final swift tug, Ianto was pulled haphazardly through the debris and into Jack's arms before the pair of them fell sidelong into Gwen. Owen helped all four of them up and away from the source of all their current problems, leaving the warhammer to the fate he'd dealt it when he picked it up in the first place.

They all stood a few feet away, staring at the golden glow in the centre of the darkness that was spreading around it. They were transfixed, as though they believed that if they looked hard enough they could see the sound scraping its way into their heads.

Tosh was yelling something across at them, but it was impossible to hear over the sound. Then, abruptly, the sound disappeared. "—ose... Oh, yes. That," Tosh said. After a pause, she asked, "Is everyone alright?"

Ianto made a show of squirming awkwardly when Jack started manhandling him to check out just that. Jack had grabbed him, and was running his hands over his chest, his face, his arms and his neck with something that was (slightly) more relief than lust. Ianto would have protested in earnest if it wasn't for the way that Jack relaxed more and more with each swipe of his hand. They weren't out of the woods, not yet, but Ianto was safe, and that was a damn good start.

Jack was laughing as his hands came up to rest on the side of Ianto's neck, fingers threaded up into the back of his hair. Jack was laughing and it was infectious. And Ianto closed his eyes and smiled, because he was about to start laughing out loud and hard himself, and it just wasn't the time for it. It wasn't the place for it. And no matter how good Jack's hands and Jack's laugh made him feel there was still a pain in his back.

It was a pain in his back, and it was getting worse. It was... It was burning. And Gwen and Owen were jumping back from him, and Jack's laughter had gone. And his back was _burning_.

Jack pulled Ianto's jacket off and threw it angrily back behind him. The indigo mass sucked it up like it was feeding time, and Ianto tried to care. But fuck if his back wasn't burning too much to even try.

Jack spun him around, and he was looking at Tosh with a scanner with a frown, and concerned gazes from Owen and Gwen who also looked like they didn't want to get any closer. "I presume that wasn't just a scrape on my back from the debris," he stated as evenly as he could muster.

"I think it's both, mate," Owen said. He held up his hand to show where it was covered in Ianto's blood.

"Oh, good... Because what's Symbiotic Alien Technology without a proper flesh wound, anyway." Ianto swallowed. "Solutions?" he asked as he felt the skin on his back start to go numb.

There was a silence around him, and Ianto tried again, looking back over his shoulder. "Jack?"

Jack met his eyes, but there was no comfort found there. Sounding almost resigned, Jack said softly, "Ianto."


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: Sorry this is taking so long. I'd originally planned on making this something simple just to get some thoughts out of my head, but it's been growing. I've been reworking in an attempt to cut it back to what I wanted from the start, but I just don't see that happening now. I don't see this getting wrapped up in less than 5 pieces, but it will get wrapped up. Without further ado, Part 3/5? Word count: 4258

Ianto's eyes went wide as the cool metal spread out over him. It had stopped hurting after the first... First feeling. Now the feeling was just a vague numbness. It slithered around inside of him, crawled up his spine. Rolled around in him. He gasped as he felt it squirm through the center of his heart. He stopped being able to feel his lung on the left side.

That was an odd thought... Could people _normally_ feel their lungs?

"Jack," Ianto heard a voice say as his neck went numb on one side. The back of his neck tingled. It was very distracting. "Whatever that is, it's inside of him. If we're going to help him, you need to start filling us in on what's going on here," the voice continued.

"Owen," Ianto said in realization. That was Owen's voice. And why was that such a hard thing to remember? That shouldn't be a hard thing to remember. He'd known Owen for... for... for a while, at any rate. Long enough that he should remember how long he'd known him.

A hand on the side of his face drew his attention. Jack. Owen had called him Jack, and Ianto was _positive_ he should have known that without Owen having said it. Jack looked concerned. His eyes were on Ianto's face, but his words were directed towards Owen.

"It doesn't normally..." Jack's eyes searched Ianto's face for something. His skin had gone deep indigo and faceted up one side, disappearing over his ear and under his hair, which was also changing colour. It didn't normally go after sentient life forms. It didn't normally, but there were stories...

Jack took a deep breath. "It will read his mind, and learn everything it can about him. Everything that makes Ianto who he is. It will figure out what it can use, and then. Then it will absorb him. Until there's nothing left of him but a blob of _it_."

Jack's eyes drifted over to Owen's, where the doctor had stopped examining Ianto and was just paying attention to what he was saying. He knew exactly what Owen was thinking—what they were all thinking: if this creature knew what Ianto knew, there would be trouble. The logical thing to do would be to kill Ianto before they got a chance for that to happen.

It was obvious. It was logical. But no one was saying it. If this was London, Ianto—Ianto's body—would already be on his way to be incinerated. But this wasn't London. It was Cardiff. And Cardiff had something London didn't: Cardiff had Jack.

Ianto was their friend, and they were going to fight for him.

Verbally, Jack justified for all of them, "Sometimes they come across people who can resist." His attention turned back to Ianto. Maybe he was justifying it to himself. "You can resist this," he told the Welshman. Begged him, just a little.

The creeping indigo had slowed in Ianto's hair. All of the fine lines that seemed to have no point—Ianto's coated in the residual chemicals that made up 21st century man's shampoo and conditioner and styling product—seemed to make it hard for the technology to fit in place. Progress ebbed and flowed up and down as it tried to find the proper progress to make everything fit.

Jack silently wished Ianto had longer hair. "Ianto, can you still hear me?" Jack cupped one side of Ianto's face, stroking his cheek with his thumb. He traced carefully around what remained of his pale skin, taking in the feel for himself and offering comfort to his friend.

Ianto's right eye had turned from beautiful baby blue into a startling yellow light. It looked glass, like it was covered in a lens. It was just so... impersonal. It was so sci-fi. It was so... _not Ianto._

Jack's fingers pressed a little harder against the Welshman's skin. "Ianto, c-?"

"Yeah," Ianto interrupted when the captain began to repeat himself. "Yeah, Jack. I can hear you."

Ianto's voice seemed to calm Jack. His weak smile was reassuring, and Jack leaned in to brush their lips briefly together.

Gwen felt useless watching them. She turned away, unable to watch as their 'Teaboy' was eaten up by some alien threat that they'd failed to protect him from. She didn't know what they would do without him. She would miss him so much. Jack would be devastated. And Tosh... They were best friends, and Tosh was just as helpless as she was to do anything.

Gwen looked back over her shoulder, expecting to share a sympathetic and understanding gaze, but Tosh seemed anything but helpless. In fact, Tosh was hard at work, sliding her chair between two terminals so she could do whatever it was she was trying to do as fast as possible.

Curious, and cautiously hopeful, Gwen moved over to join her. "What are you doing?" she asked softly.

Tosh was intensely focused on her work and didn't look up as she replied. "The alien is essentially a symbiant, but the way it communicates amongst itself is similar to how our computers communicate."

Gwen stared at her a moment, and then said, "Are you saying that this thing has wi-fi?"

A self satisfied smile caught the corner of her lips. "Oh, yes. And I detected a network." She finally looked over at Gwen. "If I can break the encryption, we should be able to see what's going on inside."

Gwen watched the screen, and then looked over at Tosh's face. The green on black writing was reflecting on the programmer's glasses. "That means we should know if they get into his codes."

Tosh nodded. "His passwords for the vaults. The archives," she spoke softly so that she wouldn't distract Jack and Owen from what they were doing. "Jack's passwords." It had been precautionary at the time, and no one knew if Jack even knew that Ianto had them, but Torchwood needed to be prepared in the event that their leader left again. Someone needed to have access to the technology and weaponry that Torchwood collected in the event of an emergency.

Gwen thought that Ianto was the safest bet for who should have them. He was the one least likely to go on missions, and the one least likely to be compromised. All of this was proving just how impossible it was to be prepared for anything with Torchwood. Safety planning had made Ianto a threat. But with Tosh's program, they would have an early warning system to tell them if the threat was about to become serious.

"Tosh, that's brilliant," Gwen told her as Tosh rebooted the system to start the program running. As soon as the reboot was completed, Tosh brought the feed up and just like that they had a direct line to Ianto Jones TV.

"I should be able to record this, too," Tosh said softly, clicking a few options on her own screen so that IJTV was airing where Owen and Jack could see it.

"I always wanted recordable TV," Gwen replied as she pulled a chair over to sit beside Tosh. They exchanged a glance, and Gwen could see the worry in Tosh's eyes. Reassuringly, Gwen reached out and squeezed their technologist's hand.

With a flicker, the screens flashed up with the program that Tosh had been installing. Once she was certain that the program was working how she'd intended, Tosh reached up and turned the monitor so Jack and Owen could see what she and Gwen were looking at.

Owen lifted a brow in question, surprised at first, but then he nodded a confirmation. Yes, he and Jack were seeing what was being projected. Or at least _he_ was. Jack hadn't looked away from Ianto for more than a second or two since he'd been dragged out of the butler's kitchen.

"Ianto, I need you to concentrate on what I'm saying. Can you do that?"

"Yep," Ianto said, casually and probably a little too quickly. It was the sort of answer a child gave when he didn't quite understand what he was being asked, but knew the adult wanted him to agree. It was hard to believe him, but they held on to hope.

"Okay," Jack said, gripping his head tight enough that his thumbs were sure to leave marks. "Now focus, too. Focus on me." Jack waited for confirmation, eying Ianto hard.

Ianto's eye was unfocused and seemed to be looking through Jack instead of at him, but he finally turned his full attention to the Captain before him. "You're holding my head, Jack. Be hard for me to focus anywhere else, yeah?"

Owen noticed Jack relax a beat at the comment, and even saw Ianto's expression warm. They shared something unspoken, and the visible emotion reassured the doctor. Placated by Jack's control over the situation, Owen returned his attention back to the monitor the girls had provided them with.

If Owen found it odd looking at the TV to Ianto's soul, he didn't mention it. Instead he watched clinically, surprising himself at just how interested he was at uncovering some of the mystery that was the enigmatic Ianto Jones.

Ianto had organised his brain the same way he went about organizing the archives. Information fit into drawers which were set upon walls that were categorized by the various needs that Ianto might have for referencing them. When Ianto wanted to remember something, he simply went to the drawer where he'd filed it, and pulled it up again.

Anything Owen had ever read on the mapping of the human brain told him this wasn't normal. It had him wondering if Ianto actually had a photographic memory. It would certainly explain some of the things that Ianto just seemed to know without reason. He'd read it or seen it once, filed it, and accessed it when it was needed. Useful for a man in Ianto's position.

The only problem now was just how useful it would be for the aliens in his brain; if Owen could see the organization on the screen, the aliens could surely see it just as easily. This was one instance where being so meticulous could be disastrous.

Owen turned away from the monitor when the aliens started sifting through his childhood. The memories of Ianto's parents getting into drunken arguments made him uncomfortable. Owen was quickly realizing this wasn't sneaking into someone's personnel file for a bit of cannon fodder. It was too personal and invasive for the doctor in him to keep looking at without permission.

Thankfully, the aliens didn't linger on the thoughts any longer than Owen, shifting instead to grade school. Learning to colour, the alphabet, math, science, Language Arts... English, Welsh, French, German. Owen had no idea Ianto had learned so many languages so young. Then they found history and stopped to focus. It made sense. Earth. Her discoveries and wars and people and races. It would be fascinating to an outsider, like a kid looking at a bug in a cup.

Owen wondered if Ianto was showing them the French Revolution out of some sort of personal fascination, or if he was actually stalling the aliens and buying them all time. Owen looked back at Ianto, watching for some sign of smoke and mirrors on his face, but he couldn't see any. Not surprising, since Ianto was very good at keeping secrets.

Jack didn't seem to care one way or the other. He had dropped a hand away, and the indigo was spreading over one corner of Ianto's lips, causing the Welshman to part his lips in a slight gasp. Ianto's legs were shaking, like the combination of flesh and bone and technology was having a hard time holding him upright. His skin—what was left of it—was pale and clammy looking. He looked like he was suddenly afflicted with a particularly nasty flu. He _looked_ cold. And ill. He looked like he was dying.

But at least that was something Owen could deal with. He moved down to the morgue, and returned with a kit. "I'm going to take some blood samples. See if I can find," Owen paused to sigh and said, "Anything."

Ianto's gaze snapped to Owen so fast it was almost audiable. It was sharp and sudden and made Owen feel cold inside. The sounds of children reciting the periodic table of elements drifted off into silence as the aliens attempted to assess Owen and who he was and what he meant by blood samples. Then Owen's voice drifted up from the speakers at Tosh's work station.

_["Ianto, get them out of the room."]_

It wasn't snarky how Owen could be when he wanted something, but the abruptness of the sound made him jump nonetheless. On the monitor, they all saw Owen, a sick looking child on a bed, and two very concerned parents standing in the middle of a hospital room. It took a moment, but the doctor realized this was a memory that he was seeing through Ianto's eyes.

"I remember this..." Owen murmured. It was weird watching the memory from a different angle. It was a 3D memory in surround sound. The question was what interest it was just then, either to Ianto or the aliens.

Owen had been pissy that day and almost frantic, but his tone with the little girl and the hands that worked on his patient were clever and kind. His face was focused and determined and reassuring. Ianto's gaze had lingered on the doctor as he pulled out the syringe and looked up at Ianto. What the memory didn't show was the brief smile that Ianto offered Owen before heading out the door.

At the time Owen didn't really know why. Now that he'd seen what Ianto had, Owen understood a little better. The way the administrator had observed him—so raw and professional and concerned and enveloped in a mystery—was somewhat flattering. Were Owen a man to embarrass easily, he may have found himself blushing to watch the playback. Fortunately, he wasn't.

On the screen, Ianto continued to speak to the parents. Owen couldn't make out what was being said—they were all speaking in Welsh—but it sounded like he was reassuring them.

"Ohhh," said Gwen as she listened. She'd obviously been wondering why they were seeing this as well.

"What? What 'Oh'? What did he say?" Owen asked, looking over at the girls.

"I said..." It was Ianto who answered. Or at least he tried to. His eye shifted about, looking around the room like he didn't know where he was, let alone how to finish the statement he'd started. The system Tosh set up began to flash through memories as Ianto searched for the word to explain.

_["Trust me," _said the memory of a boy that had lived up the street from Ianto as a child, flashing across the screen.]

_["Trust me," _said his sister, though no one knew who that was either.]

[_"Trust me,"_ said Toshiko, as she and Ianto sat in a pub together, enjoying a quiet drink and celebrating returning alive.]

[_"Trust me," _said Jack in an insistent whisper as he leaned over Ianto, shirtless and forehead creased in sweat. His eyes danced with emotion, his lips were flushed from kissing, and it was really a beautiful image.]

[_"Trust me," _said a number of different voices all at once, images flicking on the screen, over and over, threading on top of themselves until it stopped on one. Everything cut off, and it was just Owen.]

[The doctor smiled over at Ianto, lazy and happy as he drove them both up the street in the SUV. _"Trust me," _he said, and the smile broadened. They were up to something, you could just tell from the shit eating grin on Owen's face.

"_Yeah_," Ianto sighed in response. He sounded almost resigned, and irritated at himself for the admission. Irritated by the notion he actually did trust Dr. Owen Harper.]

Owen remembered that conversation, too. He'd been surprised by Ianto's tone, and how genuine the admission was. Owen watched the surprise flicker across his own features on the screen. It was disappointing; he'd hoped Ianto hadn't noticed.

"I told them," Ianto said softly. He was rolling up a sleeve to offer his inner arm to Owen. The indigo that was travelling over Ianto's body actually parted so Owen could see the skin. "That you could be trusted."

Owen was quiet. "All right, then..." Jack moved out of the way and Owen stepped cautiously to Ianto's side. He reached to press the syringe against Ianto's skin. Until that parted too, to reveal the vein itself.

Ianto didn't seem to mind that his skin was splitting aside like hair in a breeze. He didn't even seem to notice, even though he was offering his arm out to Owen with an utter lack of concern. But that wasn't what had Owen freezing in place.

Inside Ianto's arm there was little other than cybernetic work in indigo and tiny gold lights. It was like a city of circuitry and it was keeping Ianto alive. Everything that was supposed to be keeping him alive was converted, and Owen wondered if it was in fact skin that had parted for Owen. Could this thing make itself look natural so it could take other creatures by surprise?

"Bugger all..." Owen whispered.

Ianto's gaze drifted from Jack to Owen, taking in their expressions. It took him a moment to process their expressions but when he did, his brow furrowed and he gazed down to see what they were staring at.

His arms. _His_ arms... except weren't _his_ arms anymore. He could see inside of them, and what he saw wasn't natural. And finally he started to feel again. He could feel every little piece of that... stuff in him. He could feel his body aching all over. And he could feel panic.

His arms... His arms were gone as far as he understood. Except that they weren't. They were right there, attached to his shoulders like an offensive joke or dream. Like a nightmare. Ianto watched the alien and the human bits moving about in harmony, and he couldn't help but huff a single sob.

"I don't feel right," Ianto confessed with shaky tones. Jack's thumb brushed the tear away from his cheek, but he couldn't feel the touch. He had his fear and his dread but they'd taken everything else. He was so damn numb.

[_"God, my lips have gone completely numb,_" Ianto said with a laugh, leaning on his friend where they were perched on a log in the woods. They were watching a campfire in Ianto's memory, and there were empties all over the ground around them. He hadn't meant to get drunk, but he also hadn't wanted to come off as a coward to the older kid at school.

The older kid leaned in and kissed him.

And Ianto reached out and slapped him.

There was a moment of awkwardness before Ianto picked up another beer. He handed the lager to his friend before getting another for himself, and they went on pretending like it hadn't happened.]

Jack was smiling as the memory passed. He looked just a little too delighted to be watching this, Ianto decided, frowning wordlessly. His head tipped a bit to the side, and his eyes lost focus, as the monitors picked up something new.

[_"Been reading my diary again, Jack?"_ IJTV asked, picking the book up off Jack's desk. He was irritated, but hiding it well.

"_I had no idea that you had such informed opinions about the resurgence of British Rock Pop in American culture, or the impact that N*SYNC had on forming the modern boy band. But I have to say: I'm not surprised about your thoughts on Cyndi Lauper."_

Ianto seemed uncomfortable for a beat before replying with a smirk, _"Yes, well, sometimes Ianto just likes to have fun,"_ he said and closed the lock on the diary. "_Just because this is _at work_ doesn't mean you get to read it, Jack. It's _private_."_

"_Private? That wasn't even close to the private stuff," _Jack replied with a leer. He sat back in his chair, watching Ianto's face and considering a moment before asking, "_Why do you even have this here if you don't want me reading it?"_

There was a pause before he answered, admitting, "_I don't know why I keep leaving it here. I don't even know why I brought here in the first place."_

"_I do,"_ whispered a memory of Adam's voice, before both monitors went completely black.]

Ianto was staring at a wall across the room again, no longer paying attention to any of them. The darkness and silence spread, causing the others to grow concerned.

"It's working," Tosh said in response to something Gwen had said. "It's just that he's not thinking, and they're not making him think. Of anything."

The darkness and silence grew, and still Ianto stared at the wall.

Jack brushed his thumb over the half of Ianto's lips that were still pink and soft. "Ianto," he said softly. "Ianto... Are you still in there?" When Ianto didn't respond, Jack started bargaining. "If you look at me, I promise I'll never read your diary again. Ianto?"

Very slowly, Ianto's eye tracked back up to Jack's. Jack rewarded the effort with a smile. "Good. Really good." He ran his hand over Ianto's cheek and then leaned in to kiss his eyebrow. "Can you remember who I am?"

Ianto opened his lips. He tried to speak. Fear flashed in his eyes as nothing came out. It wasn't that his voice was gone, but all the words were muddled around to a point where he couldn't understand them. He didn't know the word for who this was. Word... Name. Name was the word for name. And this man's name was...

"Name," he whispered, and it sounded like he was talking through a synthesizer. He sounded like a Dalek. Or a Cyberman.

'Oh God,' Ianto thought, 'I sound like Lisa when she'd started losing it...'

The monitors remained black through Ianto's panic, but the speakers... On the speakers there was screaming. So much screaming. Near and far, male and female, fear and GOD so much pain. It was the screaming that Ianto heard in his nightmares. It was the thing that got him out of bed at ungodly early hours of the morning.

No, no, no... No, he'd survived that. It was done!

He'd survived Canary Wharf, and he'd survived the Cyberwoman in the basement, and he'd gotten away without being converted. Twice! And now, look at what was happening! He was being overrun by some sort of new technological threat. His voice made a sound of anguish.

"Jack. My name is Jack. Say it. Just _say it_," Jack insisted. His hand was threaded in Ianto's hair, despite the danger that presented, and Ianto thought it should have hurt when he shook.

"My name is Jack, and that's Owen. And Tosh and Gwen. And you're Ianto. Say it. Say it!" Jack continued to insist as the screaming on the monitors got louder.

The frantic tone made Ianto feel panicked. He tried to repeat the names but it just wasn't working. He tried, and he tried. But all he could picture was the mess from Canary Wharf. He was going to be a Cyberman! He was going to be responsible for the destruction of mankind by a new form of cybernetic human, and no one was stopping him! No one was saving him!

"I..." he said, and Jack looked encouraged.

"Right. Ianto. Say it."

"I..."

"Comeon," Owen murmured from his side, frankly creeped out by the sounds of the screaming echoing through the hub. Above them, Myfanwy screeched her distaste.

"I." It was louder and insistent that time. Jack's hand had slipped away, and the indigo darkness was spreading across Ianto's forehead.

"I-anto," Jack coached softly.

"I," Ianto stated, and he felt—Yes, he _felt_—his hands bunch into fists. "I w..."

Jack and Owen exchanged a gaze. "Yanto?" Owen said softly.

"_**I will not be upgraded!"**_he yelled, and it was louder than he'd yelled anything in almost a year. It hurt his throat. And it made his head spin. Myfanwy screeched again, protesting the noise. And importantly, most importantly, the indigo that was coming for his eye _stopped_ in place on his cheekbone.

Ianto fell to his knees as the screaming sound stopped. Instead was the sound of the metal clacking loudly against the tile echoing in the wake of his fall. "I won't," he said in a breath. "I just won't."

Jack and Owen were forced to back up as a pool of indigo spread out around Ianto. It rounded him and formed a small groove in the floor, pulsing with a yellow light. With the way Ianto was rocking on his knees and hugging his arms to himself, and the way his breath was wheezing electronically in and out of his mouth even as he continued to whisper, it almost looked like the alien was backing Owen and Jack up on purpose.

"I won't," Ianto whispered. "I won't," he said again. Again and again, he kept going. Sometimes it seemed he said it without even moving his lips.

But then all at once they realized. It wasn't just Ianto in the Hub that was saying it over and over again. IJTV was repeating the words right along with him.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4/6? 3,503 words. There's also a partly written chapter exploring just what it was that the Indigo saw in Ianto's head last time. I may put it up as a standalone when all is said and done. It just got everything too far off track to include with the main story. This series is my lazy and unofficial attempt at Nanowrimo. I don't expect to write 50k words, but let's see how many I can get out without just spamming trash.

Also, FB and story alerts and author alerts are love, so thanks to all who have left them :) 3

-Rhain

* * *

As the indigo had spilled out to make its ring around Ianto, Jack had inserted himself between the administrator and the doctor. He placed a hand on Owen's chest, keeping him in back as he apparently came up with a brilliant plan for how to handle this. Unfortunately, that was all he did. Truth be told, Jack was at a loss. What else could he do? What could any of them do?

Listening to Ianto murmur his broken refusal was heartbreaking. Hearing him stop was worse.

A silence fell over the Hub. Water still fell from the tower and computers still beeped and whirred their daily routines, but the collective members of Torchwood Cardiff held their breaths just as they held their positions.

Finally, Owen spoke. "Okaay," he drawled. From where they were positioned they could see the indigo spreading around Ianto. It shifted and rippled, like the administrator was kneeling in a kiddie pool of vivid and faintly glowing computer chips, all slickly working together to fold up against him.

Liquid crispy crunchy alien goo... licking at Ianto's knees like a good and loyal pup. Jack forced out a breath, puffing his cheeks out as he clenched back on his anger and gathered his wits. "Right," he agreed with Owen. It sounded like he was agreeing, but there was no telling what the men were agreeing to. Their combined stance was no help or hint; the pair simply continued to stare, hardly daring to breathe.

In the end it was Ianto who finally broke the spell by shifting. The Welshman dropped his forehead pressed to the indigo floor, and slowly wrapped his arms about his waist. He had at some point stopped blinking, causing the scientist in Owen to wonder how his eyes weren't drying out. Instead the Welshman was staring blindly at the floor in front of his face. He stared so hard that gradually a small puddle of tears began to pool in front him.

This wasn't the distressed Ianto they were used to seeing. There were no sobs or wails, and no heaving of the chest to indicate heavy or uncontrolled breathing. His body was still, but his lips were moving in complete silence. Ianto wasn't the sort of bloke to hold his emotions back when he was distressed or scared or hurt. Which meant this was more serious than Ianto being distressed; Ianto was broken.

Even the aliens seemed to have retreated from him in the wake of his misery. The colour had returned completely to his skin and the deep indigo had pulled back into a ring around his knees. All around the shaking form there was a sliver of hope in the form of the visible white tile between Ianto's pants and where the indigo was set.

He looked normal and only slightly injured where his back had scraped the cabinets in the bathroom. He was clearly scared and not at all concentrating on anything beyond the inner workings of his own mind. But it looked like, aside from the possible psychological damage, Ianto might be able to be pulled out of this unscathed.

Like he'd been shoved by Owen's thoughts, Jack finally moved. He darted towards the Welshman, hoping he could perhaps drag the prone figure away from the indigo before it had a chance to grab onto him again.

"Ianto!" Jack called as he reached the outside ring and dove without any concern for his own safety towards the man who loved him.

For a heart-tugging second, it appeared that he might just be able to pull it off. His hands grabbed Ianto by the shoulders, his foot landed safely on the floor where the tile was once more white, and with his own momentum, he dragged Ianto up from the floor.

Owen held his breath. Jack, the careless and thoughtless lucky bastard... He'd done it again! He was going to pull Ianto out and everything would be just fine.

But that was when everything stopped.

As soon as he got Ianto upright, as soon as their eyes met, Jack felt his heart sink. Ianto looked... Scared. Angry. Devastated. Furious. His eyes were like steel, devoid of any soft emotion.

Where was the uncertainty? Where was the compassion and delight? Where was the love?

Jack didn't have much time to consider the ramifications of what he was seeing on Ianto's face. With a sound like a sword being drawn through a tight sheath, jagged spikes stabbed all around Ianto's crumpled body, jutted out viciously at anyone who may attempt to get too close. It wrapped up around Ianto like a cocoon, and tossed Jack backwards like he was nothing more than a rag doll.

Owen broke his fall more than caught him, landing them both in a heap on the floor a good five feet from where they'd been. "Guess it's hands off the secretary?" Owen's tone was lightly amused, but his eyes were concerned. Had that blob of circuitry just protected Ianto? From Jack of all people?

Jack grit his teeth, frustrated in a way he couldn't quite voice. "Tosh!" he barked, ignoring Owen's comment as he pushed himself back up. He took the small staircase to the second platform in a single bound, joining the girls at Tosh's station. By the time he arrived, he had his game face on. "Tell me something inspiring," he demanded.

Tosh looked up at him very quickly before looking back at her screen. She wanted to have something on it that she could offer to Jack, but there just wasn't. She looked back at him, lips slightly parted and eyes wide behind her specks, but all she could do was shake her had. After a sigh, she pressed her lips together gathering her thoughts.

It was obvious that Tosh was trying to find a way to let Jack down softly, and Jack let out a noise that was a cross between a whine and a growl. "Anything! What are they made of? Are they still talking to him? Are they even a they? Or are they a he or a her or an it? What—is that?" Jack looked up as an alarm went off.

"Rift alert," Gwen said. "It's... moving." And right then, that wasn't a good sign. "Over Swansea."

Jack let his expression fall into something less than angry, but more than determined. "Gwen, with me. Owen, watch him and make sure he doesn't get any worse. Tosh? I'm counting on you to do something brilliant."

And like that he was gone. He turned on his foot, slipped on his coat, and was out the cogwheel door before any of them had a chance to respond. Gwen spared Tosh a tight smile, and squeezed her hand before quickly moving to follow the Captain.

Owen watched Gwen catching up with Jack, distantly admiring the way her ass moved when she trotted like that, and then looked back down at Ianto. As Jack and Gwen had left, the alien had receded back down and was now circling the administrator like he was a donut hole. Owen sighed and asked, "What are we going to do with you, mate?"

"Tracy," Ianto replied from where he was plunked, cross-legged and looking over at a wall blankly.

"Whut?" Owen asked, frankly surprised that he'd gotten any answer at all.

"Did he just answer you?" Tosh asked, coming curiously over to join the doctor.

"Uhhh... Sort of." Owen pursed his lips in a frown and shrugged.

"What did he say?" She was holding a hand held scanner and trying to get a reading on Ianto and the indigo, the frown slipping away to curiosity again now that Ianto had done the good grace talking.

"He said... Tracy. I think." Owen looked over at her. "Do you know who Tracy is?"

"No," Tosh replied, shaking her head.

"Tracy," Ianto said again, directing the words to the wall instead of anyone sentient. Then he closed his eyes and shook his head. He seemed confused. "Where is Lisa?"

"Lisa?" Tosh frowned. "He can't still be stuck in his memory..."

"Dunno." Owen pointed at his face. "He still isn't blinking, though." Owen inched closer. "Your eyes are going to dry out," Owen murmured, actually sounding vaguely concerned.

Concern. From Dr. Owen Harper. For lowly Ianto Jones, the tea boy with a gun. Unheard of. But not in the slightest under appreciated. Ianto rewarded the emotion in Owen's voice by turning his face and looking at the Doctor. Then, very succinctly and deliberately, Ianto blinked.

Owen couldn't help himself but to jump back. That was just fucking creepy.

"Ianto?" Tosh said softly. "Can you hear us."

"Tosh." Ianto shifted until he could rest up on his knees and the indigo vanished completely from sight. Where it went, there was no real indication. Ianto seemed to want to stand up, but hadn't quite worked out how to get himself upright, and with no clue what was going on, Owen wasn't quite ready to help him.

"Where... Where is Lisa?" Ianto looked around like he was seeing for the first time. Myfanwy flew over head, and Ianto craned his neck to watch her cross over from one perch to the next. He seemed stunned by the sight of her.

Owen and Tosh exchanged a glance. Finally, Tosh said, "Lisa died, Ianto."

The frown in her voice was evident, and Ianto turned his gaze Tosh. It took a moment, but he finally shook his head. No, Lisa hadn't just 'died' had she. Jack killed her. Ianto frowned. Jack killed Lisa. He tried to force Ianto to kill her. She... didn't have to die. He could have saved her. He... "Lisa Hallett is dead." He pushed himself up to his feet. "But where is _Lisa_?"

"Ianto," Tosh said, wanting to comfort him.

Ianto just gazed back at her, eyes glassed over and gaze slightly off. "We lost her when the light fell."

"O...kaaay," Owen said. "Tosh, I don't think that's Ianto."

"Where is Lisa?" Ianto said. When neither replied, Ianto closed his eyes and sighed frustrated. "_My_ Lisa," he insisted.

"Would that... Would that be your girlfriend?" Tosh was so fascinated by the conversation that she'd begun to completely forget about her scanner.

It wasn't a term that the indigo understood. English, it decided, was too concerned with gender. But 'Girlfriend' had been what 'Tracy' had called 'Lisa' back in London. A better word, Ianto supplied, may have been 'mate', but he conceded to the Indigo that 'Girlfriend' was fairly accurate. After the brief internal exchange, they nodded at Toshiko using Ianto's head.

"We have come looking for us." There was a brief pause, while the Indigo conferred with Ianto and then corrected to, "She has come looking for me. We lost her when the light fell."

"The new rift spike," Tosh whispered.

Ianto watched Tosh a moment, then nodded. Jack and Gwen had gone to find the new spike, so all he had to do was find Jack and Gwen. He turned and started to walk towards the door they'd gone through. The big round door didn't move when he arrived at it, and the alien in Ianto's body stared at it, not understanding.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa... Where are you going?" Owen moved himself between Ianto and the door. With only a brief consideration, he placed his hand on Ianto's chest and pressed the other back.

Ianto looked at the hand like it was some foreign experience. Owen's hand was warm. He could feel the pulse in his fingers. Ianto... Ianto used to feel like that. Before they'd joined as one. An unfortunate loss, the indigo considered. "To retrieve my... Mate." Ianto worded it like Owen had just asked him why he was taking an umbrella out in the rain.

"Okay, but... What if we called Jack and told him to bring your mate back to the hub with him?"

Ianto frowned. "Jack does not have the greatest track record with... Sentient technology." His frown took on a dangerous edge, as Ianto thought of Lisa's last fate.

"Is that what you are then?" Tosh asked, tipping her head to the side. "Sentient technology?"

The question distracted Ianto, and he tipped his head. Together the man and the alien conversed. It eventually became frustrated when Ianto couldn't act as an accurate enough bridge to explain its existence. "Human science from your time is not yet advanced enough to supply an accurate term."

Tosh actually seemed excited by such a thought. "You're from the future, then?" she asked, coming around to Owen's side. Together they were rather effectively distracting Ianto from leaving the Hub. He stopped still as the human in him recognized the ploy while the alien had been too distracted by the questions to notice.

"Yes. We are displaced in both time and space. We do not belong here." Ianto frowned, feeling genuinely saddened for the alien's loss. He thought it must be frightening, and lonely to be so lost. The alien lifted his hand to rest on their own chest, thinking that he could perhaps touch the emotion Ianto felt there.

Neither form of intelligence in Ianto's body noticed as Owen turned the administrator and led him down a set of stairs into the autopsy room. Owen glanced up at Tosh and nodded for her to go call Gwen and Jack as he set Ianto to sit on the table.

"Jack said you had a tendency to assimilate your surroundings."

"Yes," Ianto agreed, nodding as though that were an obvious assessment. He paused, considering Ianto's thoughts. "Ianto believes us to be symbiotic. It is a fair enough assessment."

Owen began to run a scanner over Ianto. He asked quietly, "Does that mean Ianto is still... in there?" He was carefully casual in his question.

"Human beings have a remarkable sense of self... Do you not get tired of being alone?"

Owen pinched his lips in a frown. "Right. So you're just doing the world a load of good, then? Plunk on down and take over everything that gets in your way?"

"No. Not the world." Ianto watched Owen intently. "The universe."

The statement made Owen feel cold on the inside. "And is that what you intend to do here? Wif all of us?"

Ianto was quiet for a very long time. Owen gave up on the notion of getting an answer, and just finished his scans. When Ianto finally spoke again, the sudden noise startled Owen.

"We have determined that Torchwood and 21st century Earth is too imperative in the development of the Human Race to be interfered with."

"Well, that's good." Tosh was standing above, watching the pair of them. "And what about Ianto?"

Ianto watched her, and then smiled that thin, forced smile of his. "Have you located my mate yet?" For a guy that wasn't Ianto, he was certainly getting the mannerisms down.

"It's rude to answer a question with another question," Owen scolded lightly as he returned to Toshiko.

Ianto didn't take the joke well. He frowned and scowled at Owen. "We wish to speak to Jack Harkness."

Toshiko appeared nervous, but Owen straightened. "Ianto said you could trust me, right?"

"Ianto said we could trust you... not to hurt _him_." Ianto slipped his hands into his pockets, and casually watched the pair. "If you wish him to remain unhurt, you will allow us to speak with Captain Jack Harkness."

Owen looked like he wasn't going to give, just to spite the other, but then held out his cell. Ianto's hand fell over the box, and then enveloped it. There was a brief flash, and Ianto was wearing a headset.

"Fancy trick that," Owen muttered.

Tosh was at Owen's shoulder. She was holding a stun gun in her hand, but it wasn't aimed. The current, she thought, might be the only way to fight back. They could knock it out, or maybe even disrupt it so it let go of Ianto. But then what? Then it would find someone or something else to grip onto.

When the call collected, Ianto began to speak—presumably with Jack—rather quickly and in a language neither Owen nor Toshiko were familiar with. There was passion in the exchange, almost as though the language were as much an expression of emotion as words. Were either of the Torchwood members watching Ianto a linguist, they may have been intrigued by the delicacy of the inflections.

When the call ended, Ianto held his hand out to Owen, offering the phone back in its original form. Ianto looked distraught. He sniffed once and straightened. For a Welshman, Ianto could do a fair impression of 'stiff upper lip'.

"Ianto?" Tosh ventured carefully as Owen took back his phone.

Ianto nodded. Tosh would know him well enough to see the shift back to himself, wouldn't she. "Yep," he confirmed, and slid his hands into his pockets.

Owen and Tosh exchanged a glance. "What did Jack say?" Owen asked, curious how he'd gotten the indigo creature to relinquish control back to their friend.

"Jack said that our...uh. _His_ mate wouldn't be joining us. Apparently this point in human evolution is too important for them to interfere with. She left back through the rift. We're...Um. We're going to be joining her."

Tosh lifted her brows. "We?"

Ianto nodded. "Mam always said I should get out and see the world... Guess she never expected just how far I'd go."

"Yanto," Owen began.

"He... they. It said I could say goodbye to you both, though. Wants to be out of here before Jack gets back. S'pose he'll be breaking a few speed limits. So...I guess I'll be leaving soon, then." Ianto was muttering. Rambling. His eyes were darting about for a hint of something to use as an escape. Just to buy some time until Jack could get back. Ianto was sure Jack could find a way to get him out of this mess.

There was an alert from the main hub. A warning of a Rift spike... Ianto cringed and breathed, "Tosh, if you're going to use that, you're not going to get a better time." Ianto's eyes flashed gold, the alien sensing the subterfuge. He spun to face Tosh just in time to register her lips speaking an apology, and the gun to be held to his forehead and set off.

Ianto fell back into Owen, knocking them both to the ground. Owen shifted under the weight and finally got himself upright with Ianto sprawled over his lap. The rift alarm silenced in the main Hub just as quickly as it had started.

"Nice one, Tosh," Owen said. "Could have aimed the fallout a little to one side or the other..."

Tosh gave him an apologetic but also amused smile. "Sorry," she said, setting the gun down and crouching beside him, "Next time."

Owen grunted. "Help me get him off. We need to figure out some way to hold him before he wakes up."

"We should take him down to a cell."

"Yeah, I don't know if you noticed this, but he absorbs matter... I don't think Plexiglas and mortar is going to hold him, even if it is _alien_ Plexiglas and mortar."

Tosh smiled smugly. "Not on its own, no. But if we run a current through the floors and the walls at just the right frequency, and set him up in a wooden chair to keep him safe, he'll have to stay there."

Owen paused where he was shifting Ianto's dead weight about. "And you have that special frequency all figured out already?" At Tosh's smug smile, Owen made an impressed noise. "Clever girl."

"You noticed," Tosh said as they both pulled Ianto up, dragging him up the stairs.

"'Course I noticed, Tosh. How could I not—Jack." Owen was cut off by the sound of the cog wheel door opening. Their eyes met briefly and Owen nodded that, yes, Ianto was fine. "Help me get him down to the cells before he wakes up. Tosh has got something figured to keep him locked up until we figure out how to get it out of him for good."

Jack let out his nervous-excited-pleased laugh and kissed Tosh on the forehead before sliding under Ianto's arm to take her place. "Tosh, you're brilliant."

"Brilliant _and_ clever, Tosh. You're going to get a big head out of this one." Owen smiled at her and then disappeared down the hall with Jack and Ianto.

Tosh forced a smile, and said to the empty room, "Right. How could you not notice something so obvious." When Gwen came running in, looking very much like the winded girl who had to keep up with Hurricane Harkness, Tosh's smile warmed. "Come help me get a room set up for Mr. Jones? He's going to be staying with us for a while."

Gwen swallowed, and then nodded and straightened, letting Tosh lead the way down to the cells at a much more casual pace than Jack had been running at.


	5. Chapter 5

Set between **Adam** and **Reset** in Season 2. Part 5/6. Currently unfinished (But entering the home stretch). Jack/Ianto. Word count: 4,339 (16,391 total thus far). Vague spoilers for seasons 1-3, and a few of the audio books, novels, and radio dramas.

Note: Sorry this took so long; I got a shift change at work, and it's blowing my writing time away completely. Hopefully you'll find it worth the wait!

* * *

The world around was spinning. Ianto knew this without even opening his eyes, because he could feel it all around him. He'd been asleep, he knew, but had no idea how long he'd been that way. With how slowly he was waking up he decided it must have been hours. Had he taken an antihistamine before lying down? Been drunk?

As Ianto grasped at his faltering memory the other entity in his mind began supplying answers. They were waking up after having been attacked by someone Ianto believed they could trust. The indigo soothed Ianto when he tried to defend his friend, reminding him that they were one now, and that Mr. Jones would need to re-evaluate his assessment of those they considered friends.

As they woke they began taking in their surroundings, remaining possum still as they considered. Scents, sounds, feelings... No one thing seemed quite right on its own. They were having a hard time concentrating, and that just wasn't something they'd experienced before. Concentration should not come so slow and at such a cost. Ianto smiled, even as the Indigo wondered what exactly Ms. Sato had done to them.

"I believe that was what we call a stun gun," Ianto answered the unspoken question trickling around in his mind. And goodness, how the Indigo did not like that. Didn't like that Ianto had been able to speak without their joint efforts, no, but it festered at the concept that Ianto knew something they as a single unit didn't. The knowledge hinted at the notion they weren't quite as merged as they should be.

Surprised to hear his own voice, Ianto didn't quite care what the alien in his head was feeling. Gingerly he opened his eyes and looked around.

"Jack, he's awake."

Ianto winced at the sound of the voice. It sounded too loud and too close. Gwen sounded like she was speaking directly into his ear, but when his eyes finally fell on hers he could see clearly that she was well across the room and on the other side of a glass wall. Closer, he could see blue electric strips that arced like bars in front of his face. "Am I in a... Lightning Cage?"

Gwen smiled a sad and apologetic smile before crouching down so their eyes were on the same level. "Tosh thought this was the easiest way to keep you safe. How is your head?"

"Throbbing, thanks..." Ianto swallowed, twisting his hands in the ropes on the chair. Ropes? Did they really think that would stop this thing?

"...electrified. If you try to get out..."

Gwen was still talking, but Ianto wasn't listening anymore. His head lulled to the side and he watched her lips moving as though through a fog. "What is the purpose of this confinement?" he heard himself ask. Oh, that was strange. He felt like a back seat driver in his own car. And Gwen? Gwen was a deer in headlights.

Gwen's lips pursed and her eyes went wide. Ianto reminded himself that he needed to get that girl to a poker table before she realized just how terrible she would be at it. Gwen and 'Poker face' did not go together in the same sentence. Unless Jack was the one uttering the sentence and there were completely lewd connotations.

Gwen shifted before she spoke. Ianto recognized that she was going through the process of carefully selecting her words. To be fair, she was quite good at doing that. When she put the effort in, Gwen could find just the right way to say something. It was part of the reason why people trusted Gwen. She made them open up to her, and they didn't hold it against her. They liked her and wanted her to like them. Which just took them back to Jack and the lewd statements...

After setting her hand on the window, as though trying to comfort him from behind the barrier, Gwen finally said, "You're one of us. We don't want to lose you." She was so honest... so certain. Her heart was reaching out to Ianto, and breaking just a little bit at the thought of losing him this way. Another flaw, then: Gwen cared too much.

Wait, did Ianto think that, or did the Indigo?

"nnnnNo. Not technically accurate." They smirked at her. "Not anymore, at least." Ianto looked around before looking back at Gwen. "All of you are out there, safe behind your electric cages and glass walls... You're the ones in control. You're bonded in that. But we're in here, under lock and key and current and supervision." Lips pursed and eyebrows risen, they said, "Ianto is one of _us_."

And _oh God _but he sounded so sure too.

Gwen's large eyes were crested with tears. She shook her head, disbelieving the words coming out of Ianto's mouth. "You can't just take him from us."

"Why?" They asked her, and Ianto was curious to hear the answer.

She was grasping, looking for a logical argument beyond 'I don't want you to' or 'because I said so', but not finding anything. Her lack of response rippled some sort of pleasure in them. Gwen couldn't argue a way out of this. They would win—they already had—and Torchwood simply had to accept that.

"You said that we're important." Jack said. He was inside the cell, standing directly beside them with his hands on his hips. They wondered how long he'd been in the room, but passed the wonder off as insignificant. "You said that Torchwood is important," Jack went on, "You said we needed to be preserved for the future of mankind." He sounded confidant and looked like he could will you into his frame of mind with nothing more than a glance of his eyes.

They both loved and hated him for it.

"You might not like it, but Ianto Jones is Torchwood. " Jack tipped back his head a little, squaring that delightful jaw line of his, and jutting his chin out defiantly. "And you can't have him."

Ianto's mouth opened to reply, but the entity controlling the words stopped mid action. Their jaw snapped shut with such a surprising force that their teeth clicked. It had assumed that Ianto's importance in Torchwood's history was negligible because, frankly, Ianto estimated his own worth at somewhere between butler and janitor.

How important _was_ the man who waxed the car and got the mustard stains out of the boss' shirt?

Ianto's head tipped back and his eyes drifted to the ceiling. They considered as they stared blankly through the glow at the peeling paint. _It_ considered. Ianto had made some interesting choices in his life. He'd done some pretty damned interesting things. But had he ever, ever really, mattered?

Yes, it decided. Ianto Jones' life had been worth living. Ianto Jones had made an impact on his friends. He'd made an impact on London and Cardiff. Ianto Jones had made an irreplaceable impact on the history of Torchwood.

Ianto Jones was unrealistically grateful for that assessment.

His eyes trailed to Jack's, watching the Captain watching them. Captain Jack Harkness... Now THERE was a man with a poker face.

"Time is like a river: You can throw in the odd shopping trolley. It'll still make it to the sea," Ianto murmured. Ianto had made an impact, sure, but the world probably wouldn't have noticed if he'd been snuffed out.

"Did I say that?" Jack didn't let his frustration show, but Ianto knew the man well enough to know when he was irritated. The Indigo smirked at him.

"The 21st century is when everything changes," Jack retorted.

The statement stopped the smirking. Ianto knew the words because Jack always seemed so concerned with what was about to change, but the Indigo knew those words because they were written across time. If Jack Harkness was a fixed point in space and time, those words were the dogma that he was wrapped in. "You have to be ready," they finished.

"Torchwood _is_ ready. Gwen, and Owen, and Tosh, _and_ Ianto. We're a _team_. A family. I _won't_ let you take him from me."

The 21st century was single most important century for the development of human and alien interaction. It was crafted and shaped by the actions of a small group of individuals who called themselves 'Torchwood'. History would see them as terrible and amazing and ruthless and caring. History saw them honestly, because of just how well everything Jack and his team would do would be documented.

CCTV. Computer files and News Reports. Journals and books and news papers and magazines. The Torchwood Archives, themselves. If you wanted to know anything about Torchwood, all you had to do was go to the local library. They were probably the most traceable secret organization that had ever existed.

Everything they did—that which was on purpose, and that which took them by surprise—lived in the computer archives of the future. For a living database such as the Indigo, it would be a simple matter of taking a look. They just needed to remember.

"If you take him, are we ready for what we're about to face?" Jack asked. "If you take Ianto away from us today, are we going to be able to handle it? You're the one that said we were important, but now here you are messing with that. So tell me now, will we be able to accomplish all the things that you said yourself were so important if you break up our team?"

They were irritated at not being prepared for that question, but considered anyway. The exploration of the human race was instrumental in the birth of their own species. If a mistake was made this day, they could prevent themselves from ever being formed, creating a terrible paradox. They had wanted to take Ianto's subconscious' word for it and simply assume he was a harmless and meaningless mortal. But Jack had created suspicion. Oh, how they hated Jack. Hated and loved.

Ianto watched in his mind as this creature, this entity, sorted through memories the way one might go through a filing cabinet. Images flashed so quickly that Ianto could hardly register what he was seeing. There was too much, too fast.

[A friend of Jack's arriving at Torchwood. UNIT. She was beautiful... Ianto wondered with jealousy if Jack had slept with her.

An alien farm filled with so much that was just wrong. Not a farm... a pharm. Drugs?

Seeing through someone else's eyes.

Winning the day, but not saving it.

There was a gunshot and... Owen.

Ianto was shocked still. He could do nothing more than stare dumbfounded as everyone tried to save Owen Harper from dying.

There was so much blood so immediately. And it was over so fast. How could he die so fast? Did people really bleed out that fast? It was nothing like in the movies. It didn't seem real. But that was what made it real, wasn't it?

Ianto felt his heart break a little for Owen. He sobbed for the loss and the lack of ability to do anything about it. But Jack... But Jack would do something, wouldn't he? Wouldn't he?]

Jack frowned, watching their administrator withdraw. He took a deep breath, and then said, "Ianto." It was that commanding tone that made girls hearts flutter, and made Ianto drop everything he was doing just to say 'Yes, Jack?' in that adorably hopeful Welsh drawl.

When Ianto didn't react, Jack felt like he was punched in the gut. He hadn't quite realized how much he'd come to depend on Ianto simply being there when he called. When he needed something done. When he needed something fixed or fetched. When he needed Ianto.

Anger and frustration warred with the sense of loss, and Jack stared at the man tied to the chair. He clenched his jaw, working out his next action. He was trying to fight over the emotion that was creeping around in him and failing. "I want to know the instant anything changes."

It wasn't exactly a command for someone to keep watching him—they could have just as easily monitored him with the equipment Owen was using in the Autopsy Bay—But Gwen felt compelled to stay with Ianto anyway. When Ianto began murmuring their names, begging for one of them to _do _something, she was glad she hadn't left him alone.

She couldn't go to him, and that stung. She couldn't comfort him and hold him and tell him everything would be better. But, she thought, maybe it made things a little better just to know he wasn't alone.

"How long has he been like this?" Tosh asked Gwen, watching Ianto in the cell. He'd begun thrashing against his restraints, trying to tug out of them and get away from the sights he was seeing. Could their future really be so grim?

Gwen stood up to join her, wiping her tears with the side of her hand, and carefully making sure her liner wasn't smudging as a result. Gwen hadn't even seen Tosh arrive, let alone know how much time had passed. Ianto would have known how long it had been exactly, but Gwen had no concept of how much time was passing. "Not long," she finally returned. Not long, but definitely too long. "It's like he's in his own world. He's gotten worse since Jack left."

She and Tosh stood there, watching their friend as he thrashed. "What are we going to do if we can't get that thing out of him?" Tosh asked quietly.

Gwen looked down and took Tosh's hand. She squeezed it in a show of comfort, both taking and giving. "I don't know," she answered, despite knowing. They both knew. If they couldn't save Ianto, then he'd be a threat to them. If Ianto was a threat, then he would have to be dealt with. Definitively.

They stood there for another few moments, silently supporting each other until Gwen finally said. "I have to call Rhys. Can you stay with him? Make sure that everything is alright?"

Toshiko offered her a grim but reassuring smile, "Yes, Gwen. I can stay with Ianto."

Gwen smiled her thanks, squeezed Tosh's hand one more time, and then turned to leave.

[The CCTV cameras picked up Owen running across the city, and Ianto was confused. Wasn't Owen dead? But there he was running. He had the impression that he was missing part of the story, but his brain just wasn't processing things as fast as the Indigo was.

Ianto didn't get it, but Owen was alive. And that was fantastic. Except that he was also miserable. Bordering on suicidal. He'd lost so much. Ianto knew that without knowing how he knew. He stayed under the water for 36 minutes before dragging himself back out.]

"How is he?" Owen asked, kicking the chair in front of him for Tosh to sit in. When she declined he shrugged and took the seat himself. "Jack said he was 'non-responsive'." Owen plunked a set of chopsticks into the takeout bin he'd been carrying in his other hand. He looked in at Ianto and the clear distress on his face. "Looks pretty 'responsive' to me."

"Owen," Tosh chastised. She frowned. "I think Jack's problem isn't that he's not responding, it's that he's not responding to Jack."

Owen stabbed his chow mien a few more times, but didn't eat it. "You think it's going to work?"

Tosh didn't reply. They remained there in silence, watching Ianto. She felt cold and alone. The more she watched, the worse she felt. "We can't just leave him like this."

"We won't," Owen agreed. When Tosh looked back at him, he said honestly what no one wanted to think about. "No matter what happens, we won't leave him like this. Jack wouldn't leave any of us like this."

[Ianto watched news reports and CCTV footage and listened to the voiceovers by someone that Ianto didn't know, but who seemed to know an awful lot about them. The words and the tone were filled with heart.

The haunted child's card game The monster at Gwen's wedding—Oh God, was Gwen pregnant? Skypoint The matches Billis

So many people died that they just couldn't save. They solved the problems and eventually saved the day, but Ianto was saddened every time they lost another life.

When the Ghostmaker tossed the flask, and all those souls escaped, and all those innocent people died... Ianto really didn't want to see any more. He really, really didn't. But it didn't stop. And Ianto couldn't stop looking.

None of them had expected to see John Hart again. Ianto had feared it, but it was still a surprise. How could he have let something like that surprise him? He must have gotten cocky. He'd gotten cocky, and Cardiff had paid for it in explosions and fire and weevil attacks. The city was in ruin, and it was all Torchwood's fault.

Ianto closed his eyes and tried to let it all go past him.

BANG

The shot from his gun stunned Tosh, and she fell.

Ianto jerked and yanked his hands in their restraints. Not Tosh... Not beautiful brilliant Tosh. That man just shot her! Ianto didn't know who he was, but he was in the Hub and he had a gun and Tosh didn't have a chance. She was just trying to save everyone!

She just bled out on them in the morgue. They got to her, but not in time. And he stood there, watching her die. Just like Owen. They were there, and they couldn't do anything about a simple piece of metal that was ripping their friend out of their lives.

Monsters and immortals and aliens and here was the brave and bold Torchwood Cardiff: decimated by bullets. Alex and his team. Suzy. Twice. Owen. And now Toshiko.

Would they all die so plainly? Would they all go out with no more than a bullet to the stomach or the chest? How would he die?

How would Ianto Jones die?]

"Jack, something's going on down here," Tosh said into her earpiece as Owen got out his stun gun.

Inside the cell, inside the cage, Ianto was sitting limply in his chair. He looked cold and he looked clammy and he looked half dead, but he looked like he was quite possibly back to himself again. Around Ianto, the entity that had been possessing him was swirling and twisting, and trying to find a way out. It was back to computer chips instead of flesh. It was back to tendrils of indigo that seemed troubling, but were far more easily dealt with than the version controlling their secretary.

The alien sat on the arms and back of the chair, avoiding Ianto as best as it could. Every so often it tested the bars, but would jerk back when the current running through them lashed back. And every so often the current would run through Ianto too, and he would yell out in pain.

"Ianto," Owen said through the comm. that fed into the room.

It was that too loud voice again, and Ianto looked around for where it was coming from. He saw Owen and Tosh behind the glass and sat up straighter. "Owen... Make it stop." He flinched as another shock ran through him. "Turn it off!" he demanded.

"Turn it off," Jack agreed, running past Owen and Tosh. He shouldered into the room, gun drawn, and Owen on his heels.

The Indigo stopped trying to get out, and instead enveloped the chair Ianto was sitting on. There was nowhere else to go with the cage and the current all around them.

Gwen stopped next to Tosh at a panel on the wall. "What's going on?"

Toshiko was turning off the power to the 'Lightning Cage' but spared Gwen a glance. "It just let him go." She shook her head as she input the codes as fast as possible. Alien technology could be such a hassle sometimes. "Not a hint that it was about to happen. It just started... pulling away from him." Tosh got quiet, like she didn't want to talk about what she'd seen.

"The power's off, Jack!" Toshiko called out, unnecessarily.

Jack held out one hand to Ianto as the blue light dimmed, and the electric bars of the cage vanished. The hand holding his Webley remained pointed firmly at the chair, as though a simple bullet would prevent the creature from striking out again.

Ianto moved as fast as he was able, tripping into Jack's arm in stunned gratitude.

Jack gripped him tightly, feeling his heart race and his chest rise and fall with his rapid breathing. Ianto was faltering, beginning to collapse entirely. It was clear that there was something wrong with him, but Jack didn't have time to look him over. Using Ianto's momentum and his grip on the front of the Welshman's shirt, he scooped him over into Owen.

Without a word, Owen wrapped both arms around Ianto's waist and ushered him towards the exit. They hardly made it out the door on their feet. Ianto crossed immediately to the wall in the hallway, leaning on it heavily as Owen took in his condition with a critical eye. "Gwen, help me get him upstairs."

Gwen joined Owen, looked at Ianto, and set her expression serious and schooled. "Right," she said.

"That's a lot of blood," said Tosh, causing Ianto to push up off the wall with a gasp.

_It was a lot of blood... _"Oh God..." That was how Owen died. That was how Tosh died. That was how—

"You're fine," Owen said, shooting a glare over his shoulder at a cowed Tosh. He looked at Ianto as Gwen helped him get him moving. "Just scratches, mate. You've been through worse." Car accidents to cannibals, Ianto had been through much worse and come through with a soft smile and a bag of grapes.

He'd be fine... but for how long? How long before the next threat or the next death or the next bloody pain? He was cold, so damn cold. And tired. He just wanted to stop the sounds in the air, and worse the sounds inside his head. He wanted to stop remembering the future. Was remember the right word for knowing something that hadn't even happened yet?

Ianto's hands clenched. Finding Gwen's hair in one fist he turned his head to look at her. Gwen. He never expected that he'd be so close to her. He never expected to be so close to any of them, really, but Gwen was the biggest surprise. He was so jealous of her, and how Jack looked after her. Jack didn't look after him when he left a room, not like that.

Didn't. Not yet. But he would...

Ianto forced the thoughts away, but the came unbidden. The four of them became a strange sort of close after... After Owen and Tosh died. They became like brother and sister, which was an unfair assessment, considering he was closer to Gwen than he was his own sister.

She smiled at him, not knowing what was tumbling through his thoughts, and he couldn't help but to smile back. Dear Gwen who would go on and out live and out last them all. Poor Gwen, burdened with having to be the survivor. Ianto could relate. It was hard, but Gwen would get through it. She was strong, and she had Rhys. "Thanks," he said to her, and she didn't know why, but Ianto felt he needed to say it.

"You're welcome," she replied, squeezing his hand where it was still fisted in her hair. His hand went limp after just a glance of a touch, and Gwen felt her heart drop. He was becoming dead weight.

One step, then forcing another, and then he was down to a knee. But he had to get up. It was becoming a habit; Gwen dragging his useless carcass through cold underground tunnels... Wait, had that happened yet? Ianto grabbed at Owen's arm and used the grip the doctor had on him to yank himself up, but then fell back to his knees.

He couldn't... He just couldn't hold himself up anymore. He heard Owen and Gwen encouraging him to keep moving, telling him he was almost there, but Ianto just wanted to put his forehead down on the cold floor and stay right where he was. Let them sort out all the alien business after he'd had a nap; he'd earned a holiday.

Owen and Gwen were like distant lights as they stood back, a new form taking their place. Strong arms swept in around him and scooped him up, and over the smell of his own blood he caught the pure essence of Jack Harkness. "Jack," he murmured and begged and yelled all in a single whisper. His red tipped fingers slid across Jack's throat as their Captain cradled him close.

"We've got you, 'Yanto." Chaste lips lingered on his forehead, and then Jack amended his prior statement. "I've got you."

Ianto coughed a noise that was both sorrow and gratitude. Love and hate. Once upon a time he'd hated Jack Harkness more than he'd ever hated anyone or anything. He didn't know how he got from there to where he was, but he could see a clear path to where they'd end up. No one could deny that Ianto honestly loved that man, not even Ianto himself... He just didn't know what to do with the emotions when they were so raw and unbridled in his mind and in his heart.

His last thought before he passed out on Owen's operating table was of love, and hope, and the kind of fear that made men strong and bold. For the first time in hours, Ianto was genuinely happy and, as the blood loss finally took him over, he showed it with both a smile and a tear.

* * *

Brionyjae: Love, you asked how I managed to get the characters so spot on and, after getting over my delighted glee at receiving such a compliment, I decided I needed to actually answer this question. It boils down to two things:

1. Read all the books, listen to the plays/audio books. When you're done read the books _while _listening to the plays/audio books. (Except 'Almost Perfect' because that book is utter trash that-while it contains a few cute nods to fandom-should never have seen print. Interesting concept, terrible execution. 50% of fan fic writers on could do better, and they're doing it for free.) Pay particular attention to how Eve 'does' each member of the team in "In the Shadows" and how Burn swaps between Owen and Tosh's accent in "Everybody Says Hello". If you can't afford to buy them, your library probably has them available. Live them for a day before you sit down and write, and the voices will stick with you.

2. Respect the RTD in all his terrible glory. Accept the things he's done, even if you don't like them. Love what he's given you (Both in Whoniverse, and in QaF). Write like you're his advocate, and try to make the things gel with the series instead of fighting against it (Unless you're AUing on purpose, but that's what AU tags are for).

When I write fic, I do it because something in a series has bothered me. I do it because they are holes that I want fixed. I started this story because I was SO MAD at the end of CoE, not because Ianto died, but because of HOW he died. I wanted to write something that made me feel better about Ianto, and about the life he had. I literally started with _how it ends_, and worked my way back. I wanted to know how Ianto would feel about his own death so that I could reconcile how I myself felt about it. (Which is what I've been building to and will release in the next chapter.) Ever since I accepted where I was going with this, I realized I don't quite hate RTD for the choices he made (I do hate parts of it, and I hate that his official reasoning was 'so we could show we were serious' but I don't hate him or the action itself).

Thanks for reading this far with me! The next chapter is the end of the first story, but not of the full arch. I completely plan on continuing this straight up through CoE. There will be spoilers for the various books/dramas as I go, but I'll warn before they go up. Let's see if I can get 6/6 out before Christmas. Everyone needs a little Christmas smut (And, wow, not with who you'd expect to see smutting at all...)

Rhain


	6. Chapter 6

Set between **Adam** and **Reset** in Season 2. Part 6/6 (Complete). Jack/Ianto, Ianto/Owen. Word count: 5,579 (21,970 total). Spoilers for seasons 1-3, and a number of the audio books, novels, and radio dramas. Rated M for Mature.

Note: While I whole-heartedly ship Janto (TheirloveissoFTW), I have a deep infatuation with hookups between Ianto and Owen. I just couldn't write this story without one, so that's why my tags keep switching between Ianto/Jack and Ianto/Owen.

Other notes: A few sequels are in the works (And yes, there will be far more Ianto/Jack in the future pieces). Sorry this has taken so long: *Insert boring life details here*. Feedback is to ficcers like water is to plants. I am being cocky+artsy and posting this without a re-read (A fact I will probably regret later when it's not 3am), but I think this chapter incorporated everything I wanted it to at this point. If anything doesn't make sense, or if you think I should take this down and do a re-edit, I'd love to hear it.

* * *

**Beep Beep Beep**

"... sedate..."

**Beep Beep Beep**

"...bleeding..."

**Beep Beep Beep**

"...mostly..."

**Beep Beep Beep**

"...convulsing..."

**Beep Beep Beep**

Ianto found himself laying on his side and drifting in and out of consciousness. He was so damn tired, and he didn't quite know where or when he was. The voices around him, though, were comforting and familiar, so he let himself sleep.

"...that you should talk to them when they're in a coma."

Jack's words were different than the others' had been. His voice was closer, and Ianto was sure he could feel the warm breath from his captain's lips brushing against the small hairs in his sideburns. It felt nice. Comforting. Warm and good. He only caught pieces of what Jack was saying, but even still, the tone was getting through.

"...to know you're not alone. We're all waiting for you to wake up, Ianto. We miss you." Jack dropped closer to brush their lips together. "Come back to me."

**Beep Beep Beep**

It was quiet for a long time after that. Ianto could hear the machines, but little else. Someone was moving about in the room around him, sliding on a chair across the floor from one desk to the other. The tap of a pencil on the table... Likely Owen, then. Thinking as he worked.

"How is he?" Tosh asked from somewhere above him, and Ianto noticed a bit of a breeze from that direction. Observation? That meant he was most likely in the autopsy bay, and Tosh was standing above, looking down at them. Just like Ianto watched Tosh when she was bleeding to death. Would watch. Might watch?

Ianto blacked out for another brief moment, and when he heard her again, Tosh was standing next to where he'd heard Owen.

"…what Jack wants," Tosh was finishing.

"I don't care what Captain Jack-Bloody-Harkness wants." Owen was raising his voice, but after a pause to consider that they might be disturbing Ianto where he was sleeping, he hissed, "It's not safe."

"But with everything he saw... You said yourself that the wounds on his back weren't that severe. He should be awake by now..."

"He should be, yeah. But we're talking about implanted memories, Tosh. There's no telling how much Recon we would need to cover everything he's seen. How much would we need to erase? Are we talking about years, or months, or decades?" Owen signed in frustration. "And even if we knew how much to give him, we still don't know how to gear it towards the implanted memories."

"What do you mean?" Gwen's voice drifted down to join the others, making Owen sigh again.

"Well, say he's been given 10 years of memories, so we give him enough Retcon to make him forget ten years. What if, instead of the fake memories, it wipes out his own. At best, he'd forget everything he's ever known about Torchwood. At worse..." Owen left the suggestion hanging in the air, knowing that their own imaginations could provide a better idea than his words.

"Owen!" Jack bellowed angrily from somewhere in the hub. "A word. Now."

Ianto heard Gwen's boots scooting away on the landing above, and couldn't blame her. He felt himself shrinking down inside at the tone.

"Yeah, yeah," Owen said, knowing he was about to be chewed out for trying to turn the girls against their illustrious captain. He stomped up the stairs and into the main hub where he and Jack had a row.

Ianto could make out words like 'future' and 'dangerous' and 'life' and 'memories'. He wanted to block them out almost as much as he wanted to block out their voices in his head. Clenching his eyes as tight as he could keep them shut, he lifted his hands to cover his ears. If he could cover them tight enough, maybe everything would just go away.

"Yanto?"

Tosh's voice was soft, but her face was right in front of his when he opened his eyes. Her eyes were large and concerned, but everything was too bright so he shut them.

"Are you in pain?" Tosh sounded so concerned. Her hand was on his shoulder and she was about to call out for someone to come to them.

"Too loud," he said softly. Then he curled tighter on himself.

"Sorry," she whispered.

He opened his eyes again to look at her, and could feel the tears dripping from them. They slid down his cheeks and dropped on the pillow under his head. It was cold in the autopsy room, and everything about Ianto was either tingling if not in pain. He felt guilty about being concerned about his own health though, when he'd watched Tosh die right there. Selfish.

"You're very pale, Ianto. I'm going to go get Owen..."

"No," Ianto said quickly, grabbing for her arm. "I'm fine. Please... Just... stay here with me?" He forced a smile at her, but his eyes were still dancing with tears.

"You're crying," she whispered in argument.

Crying. Of course he was crying. "I saw you... I... Please just stay." He didn't want to beg, but he also didn't want to be alone. When he was alone, he had a hard time figuring out what was real and what wasn't. When he couldn't hear them, it was hard to remember that they were still alive. His hand closed tighter on Tosh's arm.

She smiled at him then, concern colouring her gaze, but pulled up a chair. She sat so they were looking at each other on the same level, and smiled at him, and Ianto told himself that everything would be alright. Tosh was alive, not... Not...

Ianto cried himself back to sleep that morning.

When he woke up later, he could see Gwen asleep in Tosh's chair, head pooled on a pillow on the table beside him. He smiled at Gwen... Sweet Gwen, the survivor. She would marry Rhys, and be happy, and... Ianto felt a great nausea overwhelm him briefly, but managed to keep it together.

The administrator sat up, managing not to disturb Gwen. He wondered how she could just sit there, with her head on the table where so many people had laid. Dead. God, so much death.

So much death, and Ianto couldn't deal with it anymore. He couldn't keep thinking about it. Quietly, he turned off the monitors that had been beeping around them, and removed the electrodes. Grabbing Owen's labcoat to keep warm over his johnny gown, he padded across the room on bare feet and snuck up the stairs.

Everyone was so distracted by what was going on with Ianto that they didn't actually notice him. It was an irony that Ianto appreciated both because of the humour, and because it allowed him to easily nick some spare clothes from his desk without being spotted.

No one was in the main hub area but he could hear Owen and Jack arguing in Jack's office. Again. Possibly still.

They both had points, Jack and Owen. Owen the doctor, and Jack the great captain of Torchwood 3. A part of Ianto appreciated the professionalism, but a larger part longed for them to care because they actually cared about him as a person.

Anti-Retcon: The dosage was up in the air, and not knowing the proper dosage could be very dangerous. That combined with the medications Owen had him on to dull the pain in his back spelled very real trouble for Ianto. Plus, after what happened between Suzie and Max, could they really subject Ianto to more Retcon so soon.

Pro Retcon: Ianto knowing the future was dangerous. No one should know everything they would experience. No one should know how they would die before it happened.

Ianto gasped suddenly, nearly falling over, but managing instead to steady himself on a chair. His death. He died. He saw it, and remembered it, and could feel it spreading in him like ice water. Without thinking, Ianto slipped Owen's labcoat back on over his hot pink dress shirt, and made his way towards the tunnels that would lead out to the parking garage. He needed to get out of there. He just needed to run away.

* * *

"You don't know what you're talking about! I'm trying to protect my patient!" Owen yelled at Jack from across his desk.

"Jack," Gwen said softly from the door. "Owen."

"You've got no idea what that sort damage he could do! They left him alone for a reason, because history has to go the way they saw it. If he does anything to mess that up..."

"Jack," Gwen said again, softly from the door.

"Ianto's a big boy. He can-"

"We're talking about a paradox here, Owen. Trust me when I tell you we do not want to be at the center of that sort of thing."

"We-"

"Jack!" Gwen yelled, cutting off the tired argument that she was, quite frankly, sick of listening to anyway. When both men turned to look at her, finally acknowledging her presence, she sighed gently and said, "He's gone."

"What?" Owen said.

"I thought you were watching him!" Jack said, pushing up from the desk and shifting quickly to where his jacket hung on the rack.

Gwen looked embarrassed and a bit shy, unable to make eye contact as she said, "I fell asleep."

Jack pressed his lips together and glared before moving past her. "Tosh!" he bellowed, staring Gwen down in a way that clearly said they would have words later.

Tosh looked up from her computer to where Jack was coming down the stairs. "It doesn't look like his car's moved from the parking garage, but I have a trace on his phone. He's headed out toward Lisvane."

Jack blinked, trying to figure out what Ianto would be doing heading there. He didn't have any family there, no friends... Jack couldn't see a reason for Ianto to go there. Unless it was something he'd seen in the visions of the future. Something that would make Ianto sneak out of the Hub alone, without telling any of them where he was going or what he was up to.

Jack set his jaw. If Ianto created a paradox around him, there was no telling what would happen. They could lose him for good. "Tosh, with me." He set a glare back at Gwen as a reminder that he was still pissed just then, and then turned it to Owen. "I want that dosage figured out, and ready to go by the time I get back." He pointed at Owen like he was punching a period in the air in front of them. As far as Jack was concerned, he'd just ended their argument. Definitively.

Without waiting for a response, he swept out of the room.

"Bollocks," Owen muttered.

* * *

Half way up the street he'd realized that Jack would come looking for him. He wasn't ready to be dragged back to the Hub to be tested and probed. Not yet. So he'd dumped the receiver in his mobile into the first pickup that went by.

Ianto wasn't looking forward to the chewing out from Owen and Jack. Especially Owen... The Londoner was bound to be pissed Ianto had walked off with not only his lab coat, but his car keys and wallet as well. Which of course had lead to Ianto driving off in his car...

The last part wasn't his fault though, really. He'd gotten to the parking garage and realized that while his phone had been in his trousers he didn't have his car keys. No, those were still on a hook up in the Tourist office. Old habits and all that.

At first, Ianto had thought he'd wanted quiet. But then, when he got it, it was worse than all the noise he could imagine. Left alone, there was nothing but voices in his head. Memories. He remembered Tosh and Owen dying. He remembered James and Adam disappearing without a trace.

Wait, who were James and Adam? And why did he get such a blasted headache when he tried to remember them?

Ianto decided they were probably people he just hadn't met yet, and decided not to think about them. He should try not to think about the future, after all. He could make things worse, and that wasn't what running was about. What Ianto needed was just some time to clear his head. Just a bit of time.

He had no idea how he ended up at the pub. He and Rhys had gone in there a few times to watch the game. Or, they would go in there. They could go in there?

Ianto's head hurt, so he slid onto a bar stool and ordered a bottomless glass of scotch. That probably wasn't any better of an idea than Retcon with the medication he was on either, but he decided he didn't care. Besides, with the dull ache that was creeping up his back, he was pretty sure it was wearing off anyway.

It was about an hour later that Ianto heard a voice he recognized, cutting through the amber haze the scotch was wrapping him in.

"Ianto?"

Ianto turned his head to gaze at the sound of his name to see Rhys' big blue eyes in such wide surprise that the gentle laugh lines normally creasing the edges were completely stretched out.

"It is you, isn't it? Your mates are going off your rocker lookin' for you. Gwen is going to take a piss when she finds out you're here. I..." Rhys paused, noticing the way Ianto was paling at his comments. "Are you alright? Gwen said you'd been hurt and you disappeared from the, uh, _hub_..." He whispered the last word, very secretly.

Ianto offered a reassuring smile. "All better now. Just a lot on my mind."

Rhys looked over at Dav at their table who had his hands up in question, and then slid on the stool next to Ianto. "Yeah?"

Ianto stared at his drink. "Yeah. You made me my last dinner, you know."

"I what?"

"Baked beans instead of sex. Quite the tradeoff." He laughed, tears on his lashes. "I'm glad, for you and Gwen." Ianto looked over at Rhys, remembering the nights when the four of them had hit the pub. Rhys who was always there when Gwen needed him. "I'm glad you're together." He smiled. "You make her laugh, and she needs that in her life. You make her happy just when I don't think she'll ever smile again. You're a good guy..."

"You're hammered, Mate." Looking at him, Rhys didn't expect Ianto would be an 'I love you, man' drunk.

Ianto suddenly looked crest fallen, staring Rhys in the eyes. He shook his head a little, trying to come up with a way to explain things. "I watched... I watched people I love die today." He lifted his hand and ran his fingers back through his hair. Lost. Dizzy. Scared. Alone. Cold. "I just... Needed to get away from the mothering, yeah?"

Rhys completely understood; Gwen could be a pest when she decided someone needed to be 'mothered' as Ianto had called it. He set a hand on his shoulder squeezed. It was only then he noticed the spot of red against the pink on Ianto's back. He sighed and said, "Look, I'll be right back, yeah? Don't go anywhere."

Ianto nodded and turned back to staring at his drink.

Rhys set the beers he'd been sent to get on the table. "About time! Looked like you were trying to pull that bloke."

"Don't be foolish, Dav! I'm an engaged man." Rhys smiled and picked up his cell, dialing Gwen's number. "Hallo, love!" he said as he excused himself from the table and found a quiet place to talk.

"Rhys... I'm sorry, I don't know when I'll be home. I-"

The way Gwen could go from a complete smile to an utter apology with her tone in the span of seconds always amazed Rhys. Too much practice, he supposed. But there wasn't really any time for that, or any need just then. "I know... Saving the world and looking after your team. Listen, is your doctor around?"

Concern leapt to the foreground of her tone. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, of course." Rhys smiled, and then said softer, "I just need to ask him a question. About a friend?"

Gwen yelled for Owen, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with her shoulder, but he could still hear it. "You're sure you're alright? If you need me..."

"I'm fine, love. Promise. I'll see you tonight?"

"Yeah," she said softly. Then he heard her pass the discussion to Owen, explaining that Rhys had a question for him.

After a brief conversation, Owen came on the line. "Owen Harper here."

"Yeah, Owen. It's Rhys. Gwen's boyfriend? Listen, I'm standing in a pub, looking at a bloke with a bit of a back wound, pounding back scotch like it's going to run out, and I thought, 'that can't be a good thing to mix with whatever pain killers his doctor has him on'."

Owen blinked, wondering if Rhys was drunk, and if this was the sort of phone call he could expect now that Rhys knew the truth about what Gwen did. He sighed, and put on his most professional and polite voice-it would be easier than taking the piss out of him and dealing with Gwen's wrath later-and said, "Yeah. Pain killers and alcohol are not normally a good combination."

Gwen stopped staring at him with her big concerned eyes when she heard that. Rhys wasn't on any pain killers, so she knew it wasn't about him.

"Yeah, well, I didn't even see the blood at first. Doesn't show up all that well through the dress shirt. Who wears fancy bright pink shirts to a pub-do anyway?"

Owen blinked. Was Rhys getting at what he thought Rhys was getting at? "I can think of someone," he muttered suspiciously.

"Thought you might do. Listen, I know your lot is concerned and out looking for him right now, but he said he lost some friends today, and just needed some alone time. I wouldn't have called, but the blood..."

"No, you did good." Owen was grabbing his kit and looking for his keys. "Where are you?"

"At the sports pub up the street from St. Mary's."

"I know it. Can you keep him there until I get there?"

"Yeah. Shouldn't be a problem."

"Cheers." Owen hung up the phone. "I need your keys," he said to Gwen.

Gwen's eyes got concerned again. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah. Fine. I think Ianto nicked my keys when he left." He frowned.

"Oh. Yeah, I'll get Jack to drive me home after. You can... leave them with Rhys?"

She was fishing, and Owen knew it. He wasn't going to give her any sort of clues, though. "Yep," he agreed as he took the keychain she was holding up. "Thanks."

Twenty minutes later, Owen was walking through the door. He spotted Ianto immediately at the bar-Rhys was right: most men didn't wear that colour, and especially not to a sports pub-and headed over to join him.

"This seat taken, mate?"

Ianto's head shot up, like he was hearing a voice from beyond the grave. His eyes darted about before falling on Owen's face, and then he spilt in a shit-eating grin. "Owen!" Before Owen could respond, Ianto was grabbing his face in both hands, and staring into his eyes.

After an awkward moment, Owen said, "Look, mate, if you're going to kiss me, there's more romantic ways to go about it."

Ianto laughed a great and honest laugh. Then he frowned, dropping his hands and going back to cradling his drink. He paused only a moment before shooting it down. "Owen... I don't feel good."

Owen couldn't help but smile, just a little. "Imagine, the way you're tossing back."

"No, it's not that. It's..." Ianto looked at him, all seriousness. "I saw you die today."

That startled Owen a little, but didn't really surprise him; Ianto had been shown the future. Of course he would have seen some deaths.

"I saw you... bleeding. Laying in Tosh's arms." Tears began to fall down his cheeks. "They were all begging you not to die, but you wouldn't listen..." He swallowed. "There was... There was so much blood, everywhere, Owen. Do you know how much blood a human body holds?" He blinked. "Look who I'm talking to. Of course you know."

"Ianto, listen..." Owen sighed. "Look, you're bleeding. I think you might have popped some of your stitches. Let me take you-"

"Not going back to the hub. Too loud. Too cold."

Ianto pouted like a petulant child, and Owen growled his frustration. "Fine. I'll take you back to mine. Comeon."

* * *

It took a good hour to find his car, get Ianto into the passenger seat, and then up the stairs to his flat. It was another twenty to fix the stitching, and redo the plasters. It wasn't until he had the Welshman washed up, and slipped into his bed that he picked up his phone to call Gwen.

After explaining that yes, Ianto was alright, and no, he wouldn't be returning to the Hub until he'd had some proper rest, and yes, Owen would make sure he was comfortable and safe-what sort of doctor did Gwen take him for?-Owen finally went back to check on Ianto.

"You're bed's pretty comfortable," Ianto said. For the first time that evening, his words weren't slurred.

"Yeah, it's all in the sheets. But I'm sure I don't have to tell you about fine fabrics."

Ianto smiled at the joke, but then got a sad look in his eyes. The silence that lingered was awkward. Until Owen said, "Right. Keep in mind this is a one night only thing, yeah? Don't get to used to those sheets." He smiled a tight smile. "Well, I'm going to camp out on the sofa til morning."

"Owen... Could you... Do you mind..." Owen didn't make Ianto's request any easier by understanding his meaning without explanation, but Ianto decided it was important enough to him to word fully. "Could you stay?" At Owen's surprise, Ianto explained, "It's just, I don't really want to be alone right now. Every time I close my eyes..."

Owen sat down on the side of the bed. Then, he kicked off his boots, and slipped off his belt. He emptied his pockets of the retrieved wallet and keys, and then he lay down on top of the blankets next to Ianto, surprising himself with the small act of kindness.

Ianto rolled onto his back, but when the pain shot up his back he rolled back onto his side to face Owen. He closed his eyes, but then they flashed open again. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw something terrible. "D'you know," he started. Maybe he could talk himself into sleeping. "Do you know why it let me go?"

"Jack said they decided you were too important to the future. That you weren't done doing all the things you were supposed to do." Owen kept the same whispered tone.

"Right." He paused. "Do you know what it was that I did that they decided was so important?" At Owen's silence, Ianto pursed his lips into a fake smile, evident by the tears back on his short lashes. "I _died_."

"Did you die saving the planet, or something?"

Ianto closed his eyes, and shook his head, just once. "No. Nothing so extravagant. Jack decided he could do what was necessary to save everyone _because_ I had died."

"Yanto," Owen said softly, pausing when Ianto opened his eyes again. They were so blue in the moonlight that came in from his large windows, the tears making them shine and reflect.

"Some time, in the next... few years or so... These aliens will come to Earth. They demand 10% of the world's children just be handed over to them, or else they were going to destroy everyone."

"That's madness," Owen whispered.

"No, what's madness is that the world's leaders decided to agree." Owen stared at him, astonished by what he was hearing. Ianto smiled at him. "I convinced Jack that we needed to stand up to them, so that's what we went to do." Ianto laughed a little. "I was so happy when he agreed... Me and Jack, standing there, telling these aliens that they could take their offer and stuff it, because we were going to stop them... I was so proud of him. And so angry at them."

Owen was completely lost in Ianto's eyes, his words, his story. "What happened," he whispered.

"They... Filled the building with a poisonous gas, and killed everyone in it. Because of us... Because we dared to say no." The tears leaked straight down his face, dripping off the edge and onto the pillow. He looked so miserable. So... guilty. "Jack pleaded with them to save me. But they didn't. They said it was his lesson, for disobeying them. They said that we would all die, and then the world leaders would give them the children."

Owen didn't ask what they wanted the children for; he didn't want to know. He reached over and stroked Ianto's arm, comforting him through the sheets. "How do you know all of this? "

"I saw it. It was filmed, Owen. I died... in Jack's arms... on camera, for the whole world to see." He clenched his eyes shut, and laughed through a sob. "If you think about it, it was actually kind of romantic." Except for the part where Jack never told him he loved him. But that was just something Jack never said. Ever. And Ianto could accept that, knowing just what it meant for Jack Harkness to love someone.

"Yeah. Sure." Owen reached out and brushed Ianto's tears back, running his thumb over his cheekbone, and down the angle of his nose. "Now that you know, you could change it... Fix it so you have an antidote, or a gas mask?" The thought of Ianto dying like that... It just didn't sit right. If Owen were there, he'd make sure that it didn't happen like that. He'd make sure that Jack didn't get him killed like that.

"No. No, it has to happen like that, Owen. It has to happen exactly how I saw it happen. Too many lives are at stake."

Owen closed his eyes and leaned closer, so that their foreheads were touching. "Why are you telling me all of this?"

Ianto felt guilty then, but stayed silent.

Owen clenched his eyes tighter. "It's because it doesn't matter, isn't it. Because I'm not going to be there." He felt Ianto nod against his forehead, and then felt a cool shiver up his spine. Forcing a light tone, he asked, "Is it painless, at least? Quick?"

Ianto thought about all those months of torture that Owen went through. He thought about how Owen couldn't do any of the things he loved, and how he'd walked around dying a little more each day. He thought about how Owen couldn't feel, or taste, or fuck, or sleep, and it broke his heart.

Swallowing at the lingering silence, Owen tried again. "Was it heroic, at least?"

Opening his eyes, Ianto smiled sadly at his friend. They were both crying, both afraid, both a little lost. "Yeah. Yeah, you died a hero, Owen."

When Owen started to ask him another question, Ianto lunged forward and captured the doctor's lips with his own. He expected to be pushed back, but instead Owen grabbed both of his shoulders, and held him closer. They stayed like that, kissing and frantically trying to use the contact to wipe all of their thoughts and feelings away for a few minutes before one of them finally broke the kiss.

Neither knew which it was, but Ianto would have suspected it to be Owen. He hadn't the presence of mind on his own just then to consider the repercussions of his actions. "Owen," he whispered. His hands slid up under the doctor's shirt, pushing it up and back.

"Just for tonight," Owen repeated.

Ianto closed his eyes, and gratitude rolled from him. Owen didn't know if it was because they were going to fuck, no strings attached, or if it was because they were simply going to fuck. He didn't have time to consider before Ianto was back against his lips again, fingers deftly working at Owen's jeans and shorts.

They fucked for hours, enjoying each other's bodies, touching and exploring without concern for consequence. The interesting thing that Ianto had learned to do with his tongue-presumably from Jack-led to Owen completely accepting that Ianto was the leader of this particular show, and the way Owen arched back on the bed when he came had Ianto finally understanding the real raw beauty that Dr. Harper presented to the world.

It was raw, and passionate, and something Owen didn't think he could ever forget. He most especially enjoyed being had against the window in his front room, though the blowjob he gave the archivist as the latter was making coffee was a close second. It was possibly also the worst coffee Ianto had ever made, which stunned Owen (And which Ianto blamed wholeheartedly on the lack of decent beans, not the distraction because he was a professional and could work with a distraction, thank you very much.).

There was a touch of regret in the air that they were only planning on a single night of this. Which was probably why he insisted on following Ianto to the shower to 'make sure he didn't get his stitches wet', and more than likely why a very professional concern turned into a somewhat less than professional desire to return all the favours from earlier in the evening. Listening to Ianto scream out in delight was worth all the other one night stands he'd had that year.

When they were through, Owen collapsed on the bed, panting and damp. He was both completely naked and completely satisfied. With one minor flaw: Ianto hadn't joined him in bed yet. Grunting his disapproval, he looked back to where Ianto was standing at the foot of the bed. He was holding a glass of water that Owen hadn't heard him go get, and just watching the doctor. "What are you doing?"

"Enjoying the view," Ianto replied, sipping gingerly at the water. After a few more mouthfuls, he said, "I'll make a deal with you. You change the sheets, and I'll make you breakfast in bed in the morning."

Owen lifted a brow, but sat up. Ianto was a much better cook than him, and if he could get a decent fried breakfast served to him without getting up, he would take it. "Deal."

Ianto smiled, and drank a little more water. "Do you have a pen and some paper I could use?"

Owen blinked at him, question in his gaze as he nodded. "Yeah, by the fridge."

"Thanks. Lots of... thoughts up here right now." He gestured vaguely to his temple. "I just need to write some things down so I don't forget." With a patented forced smile, Ianto turned around to head for the kitchen.

When he came back, he had two pieces of paper folded over, and set them both on the nightstand. Owen saw from where he was sitting under the blankets that one of the papers had his name on it, while the other had Ianto's. He felt his stomach drop, and a bit of sadness in his heart. Leaning closer to the larger man, he circled an arm around him and whispered against the back of his neck, "How much Retcon did you take?"

Ianto eased back into the hold, knowing Owen would be careful of his wounds. He was so damn tired, and the warmth from the other man felt so nice. "Hm. Enough for a week?"

Owen sighed, and kissed the back of Ianto's bare shoulder, gently. "You didn't have to do that... We don't even know if that will work..."

"Yes, Owen. I did." He closed his eyes, and there was a long sleepy pause before he added. "And if it doesn't work, then I intend to take more, until it does." He yawned. "We'll figure it out."

Owen frowned and kissed his shoulder again, holding him a little tighter. A little protectively, if he thought about it. "Alright."

"You enjoyed tonight, yeah?" Ianto rolled back onto his back, careless of hurting himself, so Owen shifted him a little more.

"Yeah." He laughed a little. "Yeah, it was really good."

"It was damn fantastic," Ianto corrected, causing Owen to laugh. "It was. And you have to remember for the both of us. Promise me? That you'll remember this? You're going to have to remember this for the both of us, Owen."

He was repeating himself, and Owen kissed his lips chastely to make him stop. "I promise."

"Remember," he whisper, hearing Adam's voice whisper the echo in his mind. "Remember this. And tomorrow, I'm going to make the best breakfast you've ever tasted..."

Owen sighed, and didn't point out that that much Retcon would have him sleeping well into the evening tomorrow. Instead, he kissed Ianto's closed eyelids, and said, "Get some sleep, mate."

* * *

AN: So there it is. And, yes. I will post the letters at some point in the sequels, so you too will get to read what Ianto was thinking that night, and exactly what he told himself to remember.

Much love, as always: Rhain


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